THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


HOUSE-MATES 


BY 

J.   D.  BERESFORD 

AUTHOR  OF 

"THE  WONDER,"  "THE  EARLY  HISTORY  OF  JACOB  STAHL,' 
"THESE  LYNNEKERS,"  ETC. 


"...  a  ben  is  only  an  egg's  way  of  making  another  egg.  .  .  .  Why  the 
fowl  should  be  considered  more  alive  than  the  egg,  and  why  it  should  be  said  that 
the  hen  lays  the  egg,  and  not  that  the  egg  lays  the  hen,  these  are  questions  which 
are  beyond  the  power  of  philosophic  explanations,  but  are,  perhaps,  most  answerable 
by  considering  the  conceit  of  man.  .  .  ." — "Life  and  Habit,"  by  Samuel  Butter. 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1917, 
BY  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


CONTENTS 
BOOK  ONE:  THE  EGG 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    LITTLE  MILTON 9 

II.    HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN 36 

III.  GLADYS 59 

BOOK  TWO:  THE  INCUBATOR 

IV.  ON  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 101 

V.    THE  REST  OF  THE  HOUSE no 

VI.    THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  Row 123 

VII.    MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE 140 

VIII.    PROGRESS 162 

IX.    THE  Two  AUSTRALIANS 185 

X.    JUDITH 207 

XL    POOR  OLD  MEARES 254 

XII.    ROSE  WHITING , 265 

XIII.  AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR 284 

XIV.  THE  LOOSE  ENDS 312 


2039153 


BOOK  ONE 
THE  EGG 


HOUSE-MATES 

BOOK  ONE:  THE  EGG 

I 
LITTLE  MILTON 


1    ( 

WE  are  puzzled  by  miracles  because  we  watch  them 
from  the  outside.  From  that  point  of  view  we  get 
an  effect  of  amazing  change.  Ten  minutes  ago  this  slightly 
damp  but  apparently  complete  chicken  was  seen  as  a  rather 
dirty  egg,  that  might  have  been  regarded  suspiciously  from 
a  breakfast  standpoint,  but  was  with  the  one  exception  of 
colour  precisely  like  any  other  egg  to  be  broken  on  the 
side  of  a  basin  and  yield  the  familiar  vision  of  an  apricot 
wobbling  in  a  mess  of  thin  but  sticky  jelly.  Not  that  it 
matters  in  this  connexion  just  what  part  expectation  plays 
in  our  attitude  to  the  miracle.  The  metamorphosis  of  a 
smooth  still  egg  that  might  be  made  of  papier-mache  into 
a  differentiated  entity  full  of  passionate  activities  and  de- 
sires is  not  less  a  miracle  because  it  happens  every  time, 
or  because  we  have  become  accustomed  confidently  to 
expect  chickens  from  eggs.  For  just  so  long  as  we  watch 
the  transfiguration  from  the  outside,  the  thing  remains  a 
miracle  even  though  the  failure  of  an  egg  to  hatch  is  be- 
come the  surprise  and  disappointment. 

I  want  to  get  this  right  because  certain  acquaintances  of 
mine  once  persisted  in  regarding  me  as  an  egg  that  had 
wonderfully  and  unforgiveably  turned  into  a  chicken.  They 
looked  upon  me  with  suspicion  and  distrust,  not  so  much 

9 


10  HOUSE-MATES 

because  they  objected  to  my  being  what  I  was,  as  be- 
cause they  could  not  understand  the  change.  In  this  case, 
their  expectation  and  sense  of  consequence  had  been 
shocked,  one  curious  effect  of  which  was  that  they  were 
everlastingly  expecting  me  to  become  again  an  egg.  (The 
analogy  fails  there,  indicating,  I  think,  the  part  played  by 
expectation  in  our  attitude  towards  the  miracle.)  But  the 
important  point  is  that  they  watched  the  transformation 
from  outside. 

Not  that  I  wish  to  imply  any  esoteric  advantage  is  gained 
by  my  own  view-point.  I  cannot  boast  that  I  have  seen  my 
own  life  from  the  inside.  Looking  back,  the  thought  of  my 
experience  appears  almost  purely  objective.  And  I  dis- 
tinctly remember  at  least  one  occasion  on  which  the  realised 
change  in  myself  came  as  a  disconcerting  surprise.  It  hap- 
pened that  I  was  called  upon  to  repeat  precisely  an  opera- 
tion I  had  performed  many  years  before.  Parkinson  had 
had  a  fire  in  his  house  at  Copsfield — my  first  job  in  private 
practice — and  as  I  had  lost  the  original  detail  drawings, 
I  had  to  re-design  a  gable  end  from  the  particulars  on 
the  one-eighth  scale  tracings  that  Parkinson  had  kept.  And 
I  could  not  do  it.  In  those  years  I  had  become  a  chicken, 
and  I  could  not  conscientiously  repeat  the  operations  of 
the  egg.  Not  only  had  my  attitude  changed  towards  de- 
sign in  architecture,  but  my  draughtsmanship,  also,  had 
been  so  fundamentally  affected  that  my  hand  refused  to 
copy  the  weak  curves  of  that  old  elevation.  I  sacrificed 
my  artistic  conscience  and  handed  over  the  drawing  to  my 
assistant;  but  I  sat  idle  for  nearly  half-an-hour,  pondering 
the  miracle. 

Those  familiar  tracings  of  mine  recalled  very  vividly 
the  man  I  was  when  I  first  went  to  Keppel  Street;  and  I 
could  follow  that  man  of  twenty-eight  steadily  back  into 
his  past,  back  to  the  first  faint  visions  of  remembered  things, 
without  a  break.  The  sequence  of  his  life  was  one  of 
expected  development;  there  was  no  breaking  of  shells, 
no  emergence  of  a  hungry  bird  on  independent  legs.  And 
for  one  moment  I,  too,  regarded  the  change  in  myself  as 


LITTLE  MILTON  11 

a  miracle;  as  a  sudden  transformation  from  the  inert  to 
the  active.  I  stood  outside  and  compared  and  wondered, 
just  as  Geddes  or  Kemplay  might  have  done;  even,  per- 
haps, with  a  little  uncertainty  as  to  whether  I  might  not 
eventually  revert  in  some  ways  to  the  characteristics  of 
the  Wilfred  Hornby  who  timidly  enquired  for  rooms  at  the 
door  of  73  Keppel  Street  in  the  autumn  of  1905. 

And  now  that  I  want  so  much  for  a  time  to  find  dis- 
traction from  the  horror  of  recent  events,  I  have  decided 
to  attempt  some  account  of  my  experience — just  for  my 
own  satisfaction  and,  perhaps,  as  a  sort  of  note  for  future 
reference.  It  will  amuse  me  to  plunge  back  into  the  past 
and  follow  again  the  development  that  was  taking  place 
when  Fate  casually  and  yet  with  an  air  of  fastidious  pre- 
cision popped  me  into  the  incubator  of  73  Keppel  Street. 
(Good  Lord,  what  a  house  that  was!)  And  to  do  that  I 
must,  to  some  extent,  trace  the  steady  process  that  was 
going  on  underneath  the  neat  shell  which  any  friend  of  my 
earlier  period  would  unhesitatingly  have  declared  to  repre- 
sent the  actual  Wilfred  Hornby.  I  must  search  the  uncer- 
tain diary  of  my  memory  for  any  indications  of  growth 
that  were  marked  at  the  time  by  the  little  glimmer  of 
recording  consciousness  which  seems  at  the  last  analysis  to 
be  the  thing  I  recognise  as  my  personality. 

What  lies  still  behind  that,  what  inspires  and  forms 
it,  I  cannot  pretend  to  guess.  Yet  that  inspiring,  formative 
impulse  surely  plays  the  most  essential  part  in  the  apparent 
miracle.  But  the  history  of  my  hatching,  so  far  as  I  can 
trace  it,  is  written  in  my  consciousness.  I  admit  that  I  am 
quite  unable  to  explain  the  impulse  to  germination.  So  far 
the  miracle  remains.  But  I  can,  at  least,  account,  ob- 
jectively, for  the  emergence  of  the  chicken;  the  phenom- 
enon that  seemed  so  incredible  to  some  of  my  friends. 

ii 

My  first  great  experience  came  to  me  when  I  was  eight 
and  a  half  years  old. 


12  HOUSE-MATES 

My  father  was  a  country  parson  and  I  was  an  only  child. 
Until  1  was  eight  I  was  petted  and  spoiled  at  home  by 
my  father  and  mother  and  the  too  indulgent  governess  who 
undertook  my  early  education.  But  in  the  spring  of  1885 
I  was  sent  to  a  boarding  school  in  the  cathedral  town  of 
Medboro',  some  nine  miles  away  from  home.  I  was  badly 
bullied  during  my  first  few  terms  at  that  dame's  school. 
When  I  went  there  I  was  a  rather  prim,  fair-haired  molly- 
coddle, with  no  conceptions  of  school-boy  honour;  weakly 
resentful  of  the  brutal  treatment  I  received  from  my  school- 
fellows— the  oldest  of  them  was  barely  thirteen — but  with- 
out the  confidence  or,  indeed,  the  temper  to  defend  my- 
self in  any  other  way  than  by  a  whimpering,  or  at  most, 
peevish,  expostulation.  No  wonder  that  I  was  bullied.  I 
remember  that  in  my  second,  autumn,  term,  I  was  once 
tied  to  a  tree  in  the  playground  and  pelted  with  "conks," 
which  is  short  for  conquerors,  otherwise  chestnuts. 

It  was  natural  enough  that  I  should  hate  that  school 
during  my  first  term,  even  if  I  had  not  been  bullied.  The 
differences  between  school  and  home  were  incalculable. 
The  head-mistress  was,  I  believe,  a  kind-hearted  creature 
and  ready  to  make  allowances  for  such  a  tender-skinned 
product  as  myself,  newly  unwrapped  and  suddenly  exposed 
to  all  the  jostlings  of  school-life ;  but,  to  her,  I  was  only 
one  little  boy  among  eighteen  other  little  boys,  superfi- 
cially much  alike — and  up  till  then  I  had  been  not  "only 
one,"  but  the  one  and  only  boy. 

I  do  not,  now,  remember  the  emotions  of  joy  and  ex- 
pectancy that  must  have  thrilled  me  at  the  prospect  of 
going  home  for  my  first  summer  holiday.  Those  emotions 
must  have  been  very  intense,  but  they  are  confused  in 
my  mind  with  the  emotions  I  afterwards  experienced  on 
so  many  other  similar  occasions.  The  memory  that  re- 
mains is  of  the  experience  that  was  undoubtedly  an  out- 
come of  my  long  and  ardent  anticipations. 

My  father  and  mother  drove  in  from  Little  Milton 
to  fetch  me  home,  so  that  my  relief  from  slavery  must 
have  been  more  than  an  hour  old  when  we  arrived  at  the 


LITTLE  MILTON  13 

Vicarage,  and  my  former  relations  with  what  I  regarded  as 
my  real  and  true  life  firmly  re-established.  Yet  I  remem- 
ber nothing  whatever  of  the  meeting  with  my  father  and 
mother,  nor  of  the  details  of  the  drive  home.  The  whole 
of  the  facts  are  focussed  for  me  by  my  sight  of  the 
house  as  we  came  slowly  up  the  drive,  through  the  avenue 
of  rhododendrons. 

The  drawing-room  end  of  the  Vicarage  was  covered  with 
a  dark  green  trellis  of  woodwork  to  give  a  ladder  for  the 
tendrilled  hands  of  the  purple  clematis,  which  with  that  aid 
had  climbed  up  between  the  two  French  windows  of  the 
ground  floor,  spread  itself  across  the  width  of  the  ele- 
vation, and  now  displayed  its  vigour  in  a  decoration  of 
leaf  and  flower  right  up  to  and,  in  places,  beyond  the  eaves 
gutter  of  the  lichened  slate  roof. 

And  the  sight  of  that  rich  colour,  outlining  the  beauty 
of  form  that  was  so  sharply  picked  out  by  the  direct 
light  of  the  high  sun,  stirred  me  for  a  moment  to  a  higher 
consciousness  of  being.  I  hovered  for  an  instant,  with  a 
keen  sense  of  expectation,  on  the  edge  of  some  amazing 
adventure.  It  was  as  if  I  had  discovered  some  pin-prick 
in  the  world  of  my  reality,  a  tiny  hole  that  let  in  the  daz- 
zling light  of  a  richer,  infinitely  more  beautiful  world  be- 
yond. It  seemed  to  me  that  if  I  could  but  hold  myself 
intensely  still  I  might  peep  through  the  curtain  of  appear- 
ances and  catch  one  glimpse  of  something  indefinable  that 
was  the  fountain  of  all  ecstasy. 

I  had  no  words,  nor  perhaps  ideas,  then,  for  that  sudden 
emotion  of  happiness ;  I  am  unable,  rtow,  after  many  repeti- 
tions of  it,  in  diverse  forms,  to  express  what  is  in  my  own 
mind  regarding  them;  but  I  know  that  that  experience  is 
my  first  vivid  memory  of  existence  and  that  nothing  could 
extinguish  it. 

And  it  was  broken  by  my  father's  voice,  saying  with  a 
familiar  accustomed  cheerfulness,  "Ah!  well;  here  we  are 
at  last." 

At  least  I  presume  that  was  what  he  actually  said  on 
that  occasion — he  always  did  say  it. 


14.  HOUSE-MATES 

After  tea  I  went  out  again  into  the  garden,  to  stare  at 
the  clematis  on  that  south  wall;  and  I  admired  immensely 
what  I  should,  now,  call  the  design  of  it,  which  had,  in 
effect,  the  feeling  of  a  particularly  brilliant  cretonne.  But 
there  was  no  return  of  ecstasy;  no  peephole;  nothing 
opened.  ' 

in 

Other  instances  occur  to  me,  now,  of  the  same  sudden 
emotion  of  happiness,  combined  with — or  should  it  be,  aris- 
ing from  ? — a  sense  of  some  amazing  comprehension.  Some- 
times that  state  of  rapture  followed  a  dream,  apparently 
meaningless  when  considered  in  relation  to  the  common 
affairs  of  life,  but,  to  me,  charged  with  a  mysterious  sig- 
nificance that  endured,  gradually  weakening,  in  some  cases 
for  years.  One  such  dream  that  still  remains  in  my  mind 
as  a  transcendental  experience,  concerned  the  slaughter  of 
a  lamb,  an  elephant  and  a  little  white  bull.  They  were  led 
on,  each  by  its  attendant,  across  the  space  of  a  great  arena, 
on  one  side  of  which  I  stood  alone,  while  on  the  other 
an  incalculable  crowd  of  vaguely  realised  spectators  were 
massed  along  the  tiers  of  a  grand  stand  that  must  have 
been  built  on  the  face  of  a  mountain.  In  my  dream  I  knew 
that  the  solemn  procession  of  animals,  led  to  formal  sacri- 
fice, was  made  in  order  that  I  might  learn  to  die  without 
hesitation  or  regret;  and  for  many  years  after  I  cherished 
the  thought  of  some  old  dignity  of  mine  that  had  glorified 
another  life  lived  in  the  deeps  of  history. 

I  reached  my  rapture  in  many  ways;  along  the  music 
of  the  organ  in  Medboro'  Cathedral;  by  a  glimpse  of  the 
cathedral  pinnacles  faintly  lit  by  the  winter  sun  and  pricking 
up  through  a  lake  of  mist  that  drowned  the  flooded  meadows 
by  the  river;  by  a  combination  of  magical  green  lights, 
when  I  stood  in  a  summer  wood  of  young  beeches  and 
gazed  up  towards  the  brightness  of  the  unseen  day;  and 
once,  I  remember,  by  the  smell  and  colour  and  touch  of  a 
great  Gloire-de-Dijon  rose  that  had  flowered  just  at  the 


LITTLE  MILTON  15 

level  of  my  face  on  the  wall  of  my  father's  study.  I  kissed 
the  velvet  of  the  deep  crimson  petals,  and  for  a  moment 
I  seemed  to  understand  the  secret  joy  of  a  flower's  open- 
ing to  life. 

But  I  am  not  going  to  write  the  story  of  my  common- 
place youth.  Those  transitory  flashes  of  ecstasy  were  few 
enough,  and  did  not  perceptibly  influence  the  normal  course 
of  my  thought,  which  was  not  more  touched  by  imagina- 
tion than  the  thought  of  the  average  boy.  I  never  men- 
tioned those  moments  of  mine  to  any  one,  not  even  to  my 
mother.  They  were  private,  delightful  experiences,  pecu- 
liar, as  I  then  believed,  to  myself,  and  I  did  not  care  to 
confess  my  peculiarity.  When  I  grew  older  I  drifted  into 
a  name  for  them.  I  called  my  state,  clumsily,  "being  exalte" 
— the  English  word  "exalted"  meant  something  quite  other 
to  me;  it  was  a  Bible  word,  and  all  Bible  words  carried 
with  them  some  atmosphere  of  tedium,  some  association 
of  class-work,  or  Sunday-school,  or  dreary  hours  in  the 
arid  solemnity  of  my  father's  church. 

I  see  that  I  am  getting  my  proportions  all  wrong.  In  my 
endeavour  to  trace  some  signs  of  the  change  that  was  going 
on  underneath  the  shell  I  have,  as  it  were,  turned  my  egg 
inside  out  and  exhibited  the  germinal  vesicle  under  a  mi- 
croscope. (This  metaphor  of  the  egg  is  growing  tedious 
and  too  elaborate.)  And  yet  I  suppose  it  is  impossible  for 
me  to  show  the  Wilfred  Hornby,  assumed  by  my  relations, 
friends  and  acquaintances.  Incidentally,  I  wonder  whether 
any  two  of  them  made  precisely  the  same  assumptions? 
They  would,  however,  have  agreed  upon  certain  obvious 
characteristics,  and  when  I  come  to  consider  that  "lowest 
common  measure"  of  myself  I  can  get  no  further  than  the 
conclusion  that  I  was  absurdly  mediocre. 

When  I  went  to  Oakstone  at  the  age  of  twelve,  I  was 
put  in  the  lower  second,  and  when  I  left,  five  years  later, 
I  was  in  the  upper  fifth  with  the  prospect,  if  I  stayed  on 
at  the  school,  of  a  move  up  to  the  lower  sixth  and  the 
dignity  of  becoming  a  prefect.  I  occupied  a  respected  place 
in  the  first  game  at  cricket,  I  was  regarded  as  a  certainty 


16  HOUSE-MATES 

for  the  eleven  next  year,  and  I  got  my  colours  for  "Rugby" 
in  the  last  match  of  the  Easter  term.  I  had  a  bosom  friend 
whom  I  have  never  seen  since  I  left  school,  and  I  did  not 
achieve  the  distinction  of  being  either  remarkably  popular 
or  unpopular.  Then,  too,  in  appearance  I  am  neither  fair 
nor  dark;  and  good-looking  enough  to  escape  any  sort  of 
comment. 

But  all  these  details  are  without  any  kind  of  value.  They 
are  just  such  foolish  particulars  as  a  friend  may  give  you 
when  he  is  asked  to  describe  some  one  he  has  met;  some 
one  whom,  perhaps,  you  think  you  know  yourself.  Such 
descriptions  are  a  weariness,  although  they  do  uphold  my 
point  with  regard  to  seeing  people  from  the  outside.  Until 
I  went  to  Keppel  Street,  I  should  have  given  some  such 
account  of  any  casual  acquaintance. 

The  real  test  for  my  mediocrity  must  be  applied  to  the 
life  I  lived  inside  my  shell;  and,  although  I  still  have  a 
doubt  whether  my  "moments"  may  not  constitute  a  weak 
claim  to  distinction,  I  can  find  no  other  grounds  for  the 
boast  that  I  was  not  as  other  boys.  This  modesty,  how- 
ever, is  retrospective.  I  am  looking  back  with  a  cold,  de- 
tached criticism;  seeing  myself  with  that  uninspired  accu- 
racy of  knowledge  which  we  cannot  bring  to  the  study 
of  any  other  human  being.  It  is  a  knowledge  that  gives  a 
curious  flatness  to  the  image  evoked.  The  romantic  possi- 
bilities of  another  person's  inner  life  are  eliminated.  I  fail 
to  find,  now,  any  delightful  potentialities  in  the  man  I  was. 
And  yet  I  am  conscious  of  them  in  myself  as  I  write,  and 
at  any  moment  in  my  past  the  same  consciousness  was 
present ;  ready  to  flare  up  full  of  zest  and  confidence  at  the 
least  provocation. 

As  a  boy  I  certainly  regarded  the  religious  emotions 
that  first  began  to  shake  me  when  I  was  coming  through 
the  crisis  of  puberty,  as  an  intensity  peculiar  to  myself. 
Many  boys  suffer  those  emotions  in  one  form  and  another, 
but  few  of  them  confess  their  experience  at  the  time. 
Shame  and  spiritual  pride  are  common  impediments  to 


LITTLE  MILTON  17 

speech,  I  suppose,  but  I  do  not  find  either  very  clearly 
marked  in  my  own  case. 

My  first  serious  attack  developed  quite  unexpectedly 
when  I  was  fifteen. 

I  was  home  for  the  summer  holidays,  and  the  incident 
that  apparently  started  my  fit  was  a  conversation  with  my 
father. 

He  was  a  tall,  handsome  man,  clean-shaven  except  for 
rather  bushy  grey  side-whiskers ;  and  he  had  a  manner  well 
adapted  to  confirm  the  general  impression  of  a  scholar  who 
had  settled  down  to  the  ease  of  a  University  living.  He  was, 
indeed,  a  very  sound  classic,  and  his  qualifications  ke^pt  him 
always  provided  with  the  two  pupils  whose  fees  enabled 
him  to  keep  me  at  Oakstone.  He  had  no  scruples  about 
coaching  the  sons  of  other  men,  but  he  had  a  queer  diffi- 
dence concerning  his  ability  to  educate  his  own  son. 

And  it  was  this  subject  which  led  him  on,  that  afternoon, 
to  talk  with  a  most  unusual  confidence  of  his  hopes  for 
me.  He  had  taken  me  over  to  tea  at  a  friend's  house  some 
three  miles  away,  across  the  river,  and  we  had  a  delightful 
walk  home  through  the  meadows.  It  was  a  particularly 
serene  evening  in  late  August,  and  we  had  the  country 
to  ourselves.  No  corn  was  ever  grown  in  that  wide  stretch 
of  low  pasture — it  was  too  subject  to  winter  floods  and  all 
the  life  of  the  neighbourhood  had  been  drawn  away  to  the 
arable  of  the  higher  lands,  where  the  harvest  was  in  full 
swing.  I  have  a  strong  impression,  now,  of  the  black  green 
of  the  water  under  the  shadow  of  the  hanging  woods  on 
the  farther  side  of  the  river,  and  I  think  that,  when  my 
father  began  so  unexpectedly  to  give  me  his  confidence,  my 
thoughts  were  at  first  somewhat  distracted  by  considerations 
of  a  likely  place  for  chub. 

He  opened  familiarly  enough  with  some  reference  to  the 
peace  of  the  evening,  and  some  phrase  he  found — it  was,  I 
think,  "otia  liberrima" — bored  me  by  recalling  the  associa- 
tion of  the  schoolroom.  I  always  regarded  him  more  as 
a  schoolmaster  than  a  father;  and  I  suppose  nothing  could 
ever  have  cured  him  of  his  habit  of  Latin  quotation — prin- 


18  HOUSE-MATES 

cipally  Horace.  And  when  he  became  a  little  reminiscent 
and  touched  on  the  dreams  of  his  own  youth,  I  was  still 
sheepish  and  self-conscious.  I  was  quite  unable  to  think 
of  my  father  as  a  fellow  pilgrim;  his  calling  and  age— he 
must  have  been  about  fifty-five  at  that  time — ranged  him 
too  definitely  with  the  pedagogues,  with  those  mechanical, 
infallible  beings  who  inspired  respect  but  could  never  be 
imagined  as  asking  for  sympathy. 

My  father  concluded  that  wistful  survey  of  his  drowned 
ambitions  with  a  slightly  whimsical  twirl  of  his  Malacca 
cane  and  the  inevitable  tag  of  "Pulvis  et  umbra  sumus."  I 
came  in  happily,  sure  of  my  ground  for  once,  with  a  re- 
flective "Quo  pius  jEneas." 

My  father  was  obviously  pleased.  "Ah!  magnificent  fel- 
low, Horace,"  he  said,  "one  can  take  him  anywhere.  I'm 
glad  to  find  you're  already  beginning  to  appreciate  him,  my 
boy.  But" — and  he  sighed  with  a  sort  of  spacious  reflective- 
ness— "I  don't  know  that  I  particularly  want  you  to  go 
into  the  church." 

That  suggestion  instantly  caught  my  attention.  My 
mother  had  no  ambition  for  me  other  than  the  taking 
of  Holy  Orders,  and  often  wearied  me  with  her  well-meant 
advice  on  the  subject.  Her  chief  argument  was  that  the 
Church,  as  a  profession,  was  so  "safe" ;  her  regard  being  for 
my  spiritual  and  not  my  worldly  protection.  She  had  had  a 
brother  who  had  gone  very  wild,  and  she  was  the  more 
anxious  to  protect  me  from  similar  perils  of  the  soul. 

"Don't  you,  pater?"  I  said  eagerly.  "I  thought  .  .  . 
mater  has  always  said  .  .  ." 

"Not  unless  you  have  an  urgent  call,"  he  returned,  shift- 
ing his  ground  a  little.  "In  that  case,  of  course,  I  should  be 
the  last  person  in  the  world  to  stand  in  your  way.  And 
your  dear  mother,  as  you  say  ...  No,  no,  all  I  meant  was 
I  don't  want  you  to  drift  into  orders  as  the  easiest 
leans  to  a  profession— if,  as  I  say,  you  have  no  particular 
bias.  I  myself  .  .  ."  But  he  apparently  thought  it  wiser 
.o  avoid  that  confession,  for  he  pulled  himself  up  and  went 


LITTLE  MILTON  19 

on :  "However,  I  daresay  you  hardly  know  your  own  mind 
yet.  Time  enough  in  a  couple  of  years.  .  .  ." 

"I  think  I  should  rather  like  to  be  an  architect,  pater," 
I  suggested,  timidly.  This  was  the  first  time  I  had  given 
utterance  to  that  ambition,  but  it  had  been  my  secret  desire 
for  two  years.  I  had  a  natural  gift  for  drawing  and  the 
subjects  I  selected  had  always  been  architectural.  I  believe 
that  I  recognised,  subconsciously,  even  as  a  boy,  that  the 
wider  powers  of  the  artist  were  denied  to  me.  I  was  too 
Conscientious,  or  had  not  enough  imagination,  to  attempt 
landscape.  But  I  put  out  my  suggestion  with  considerable 
shyness  and  hesitation.  I  could  not,  in  those  days,  avoid 
the  feeling  that  any  such  proposition  of  mine  must  inevitably 
be,  for  some  esoteric  reason,  puerile  and  foolish. 

"Ah!"  remarked  my  father  as  if  he  were  sampling  the 
quality  of  a  wine,  and  then  added  after  a  moment's  con- 
sideration, "Well,  well,  it's  a  very  fine  profession." 

I  was  encouraged  to  enlarge  on  my  proposition,  and  it 
was  not  cunning  or  dishonesty  on  my  part  that  induced 
me  to  speak  almost  exclusively  of  ecclesiastical  architec- 
ture as  the  object  of  my  dreams.  I  had  been  brought  up 
under  the  shadow  of  a  church,  and  there  were  some  really 
fine  bits  of  work  in  our  church  at  Little  Milton — the  flam- 
boyant tracery  of  the  three-light  west  window  is  illustrated 
in  all  the  text  books  of  English  Gothic. 

My  father  listened  to  my  boyish  enthusiasms  with  evi- 
dent pleasure,  but  his  thought  must  have  been  engaged 
with  the  possibilities  of  my  diances  of  livelihood,  for  when 
he  answered  me,  he  began  to  speak  of  the  difficulties  of 
ways  and  means.  "So  few  churches  are  built,  nowadays," 
was  one  of  his  objections,  a  remark  that  shows  how  deeply 
he  had  sunk  under  the  influences  of  his  provincial  sur- 
roundings. He  had  forgotten  the  growth  of  cities,  and 
was  studying  the  problem  from  his  knowledge  of  our  own 
neighbourhood  in  which  there  had  been  no  new  church 
built  within  living  memory.  "Restoration,  of  course,"  he 
put  in,  continuing  his  local  test,  and  he  brightened  up  a 
little  with  a  comment  on  Truro  Cathedral. 


20  HOUSE-MATES 

"Of  course,  I  needn't  do  only  churches,"  I  reminded  him. 

"No,  no,  of  course  not,"  he  said,  and  went  on  to  tell 
me  that  he  had  been  at  King's  with  Sidney  Baxter,  of 
Heaton  &  Baxter,  the  well-known  ecclesiastical  architects 
in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields. 

We  had  quite  decided  my  future  by  the  time  we  came 
to  the  bridge  over  the  lock,  and  we  stood  there  for  a  few 
minutes,  more  nearly  understanding  one  another  than  we 
had  ever  done  before.  The  sun  was  setting  blood  red, 
and  the  slender  leaves  of  a  willow  on  the  further  bank 
traced  a  graceful  pattern  in  dead  black  against  the  dying 
splendour  of  that  indented  circle  of  fire.  (Years  after- 
wards I  got  rather  a  good  design  for  a  wall-paper  out  of 
that  memory.) 

Perhaps  my  father  had  a  "moment"  just  then,  and  found 
in  his  visions  for  me  some  vicarious  satisfaction  for  his 
own  failure.  I  remember  that  he  came  out  with  "usque 
ego  postera  Crescam  laude  recens,"  which  could  only  have 
been  induced  by  the  thought  of  some  very  magnificent 
achievement.  I  wonder  if  I  should  have  got  nearer  to 
him  if  he  had  not  worn  that  wide-awake  and  frock  coat  and 
"all-round"  collar?  I  suppose  not.  We  have  often  bathed 
together,  and  even  in  the  water  one  would  have  known 
him  for  a  parson.  It  was  not  only  his  whiskers  that 
stamped  him;  there  was  something  bland  and-  a  little 
feminine  in  his  face,  something  that  was  yet  not  in  con- 
tradiction to  his  height  and  the  square  breadth  of  his  fine 
shoulders. 

No  doubt  I  was  a  little  stirred  emotionally  by  that  new 
intercourse  with  my  father,  and  by  the  promised  effect  of 
what  seemed  to  be  the  successful  result  of  my  argument 
for  architecture  as  a  profession.  But  the  religious  fervour 
which  first  attacked  me  that  same  evening  and  continued 
with  slowly  abating  fury  for  nearly  a  week,  was  due  almost 
entirely  to  my  sense  of  relief,  and  to  the  gratitude  it  en- 
gendered. Subconsciously  I  had  been  aware  of  my  future 
as  the  entrance  to  servitude.  I  had  hardly  believed  it 
possible  that  I  could  escape  that  "sacred  calling"  of  my 


LITTLE  MILTON  21 

mother's  ambition,  a  calling  that  in  my  mind  was  asso- 
ciated with  an  endless  barrier  of  self-repression  and  re- 
strictions. "Duty"  figured  so  overwhelmingly  in  her  pic- 
ture of  my  career,  and  it  was  a  word  that  had  come  to 
stand  as  a  synonym  for  all  the  restraints  of  school  life.  I 
had  to  become  my  own  schoolmaster  and  live  in  a  per- 
petual pupilage  to  the  teachings  of  the  church  as  expounded 
and  practised  by  myself.  Indeed  my  mother  nearly  al- 
ways referred  to  life  as  a  school.  It  is  true  that  I  regarded 
the  reward  of  Paradise  as  eminently  desirable  if  only 
as  an  escape  from  the  horrid  alternative  of  Eternal  Pun- 
ishment that  we  conscientiously  accepted  in  our  evangel- 
ically-minded household. 

And  that,  too,  had  its  influence  in  evoking  the  strenuous 
resolves  of  the  period  that  immediately  followed  the  pros- 
pect of  release.  I  was  suddenly  confronted  with  a  new 
responsibility  that  I  must  shoulder  for  myself.  A  clergy- 
man was  holy,  was  "saved"  by  hypothesis.  It  was  to  me 
incredible  that  a  clergyman  should  not  go  to  Heaven.  If 
you  went  into  the  Church,  you  had  to  be  good,  was  the 
way  I  argued.  The  schoolmaster  was  always  with  you. 
But  a  mere,  secular  architect  had  to  choose  his  own  path 
to  Heaven.  I  set  about  choosing  mine  at  once. 

Yet  I  do  not  wish  to  convey  the  impression  that  my 
little  spell  of  religious  emotion  was  deliberately  induced. 
It  was  primarily  evoked  by  my  sense  of  relief,  and  it  was 
to  that  extent  at  least  spontaneous.  Only  the  expression 
of  it  was  necessarily  deliberate.  I  had  not  many  sins  to 
recant  but  I  made  the  most  of  those  I  had. 

I  made  vows  of  unselfishness,  for  example,  of  a  more 
willing  obedience  to  my  parents  and  masters;  and  of  a 
greater  devotion  and  attention  during  prayers  and  church- 
service.  I  had  not,  then,  been  confirmed,  but  I  was  being 
tentatively  prepared  for  that  ceremony  and  I  decided  to 
fix  my  mind  on  my  final  acceptance  into  the  church  with 
a  great  seriousness.  But  the  true  characteristic  of  my  con- 
version was  associated  with  those  sexual  yearnings  which 
had  just  begun  to  find  queer  forms  of  expression.  I 


22  HOUSE-MATES 

had  one  or  two  drawings  in  my  pocket  copied  from  the 
illustrations  of  a  smuggled  copy  of  "Ally  Sloper"  which 
had  been  privately  cherished  for  a  couple  of  days  and 
then  burnt  in  the  kitchen  garden  under  dread  of  discovery. 
These  drawings  would  not  have  shocked  the  ordinary  con- 
ventional mind.  The  worst  of  them  presented  a  chubby- 
legged  young  woman  in  a  short  skirt,  who  boasted  a  turnip- 
shaped  torso  not  too  shamelessly  decollete.  But  to  me  she 
represented  some  mysterious,  alluring,  quite  incompre- 
hensible sin.  She  was  the  emblem  of  immoral,  irresponsible 
femininity.  If  I  had  met  her  in  the  flesh  in  the  vicarage 
garden,  I  should  certainly  have  fled  from  her  in  horror; 
but  the  contemplation  of  her  image,  very  carefully  copied 
on  a  sheet  of  my  mother's  writing  paper,  had  upon  me  the 
effect  of  enjoying  a  furtive,  delightful  wickedness.  I  burnt 
her  with  less  successful  emblems  in  another  specially  con- 
structed bonfire,  and  added  to  the  pile  of  copy  of  Eugene 
Sue's  "Mysteries  of  Paris,"  purloined  from  my  father's 
study.  The  book  had  not  interested  me ;  indeed,  ( I  had  only 
read  the  first  few  pages ;  but  it  had  an  air  of  being  definitely 
profane  and  prohibited,  and  I  had  sometimes  crept  up  to 
my  own  room  just  to  touch  it  where  it  lay,  carefully  con- 
cealed, I  hoped,  under  a  pile  of  winter  vests  in  my  bottom 
drawer.  The  very  touch  of  the  book  gave  me  the  sense 
of  an  ecstatic  surrender  to  the  delicious  wiles  of  the  devil. 

Yet  my  vows  and  renunciation  of  the  sinful  lusts  of  the 
flesh  were  made  without  effort.  They  represented  my  will- 
ing offerings  in  the  cause  of  righteousness,  inasmuch  as 
my  mood  did  not  arise  from  any  conviction  of  sin,  but 
from  a  sudden  urgent  desire  to  become  what  I  called  simply 
and  effectively  "good."  It  is  true  that  later  manifestations 
were  more  complex;  and  some  of  them  more  enduring. 
One  that  followed  a  definite  lapse  from  virtue— I  was  about 
twenty-five  at  that  time— lasted  for  several  weeks.  But 
the  general  effects  of  them,  upon  myself,  were  always  much 
alike.  I  had  a  feeling  of  being  singled  out  from  the  mass 
of  my  fellows;  I  experienced  an  uplifting  and  serenity 
of  mind ;  a  consciousness  of  immediate  satisfaction  as  a  re- 


LITTLE  MILTON  23 

ward  for  the  noble  resolutions  that  I  was  making.  It  seems, 
indeed,  as  if  the  whole  manifestation  arose  from  an  egotism 
that  might  in  extreme  cases  develop  into  megalomania. 
Not  that  I  advance  this  statement  as  in  any  sense  an  ex- 
planation of  the  phenomena.  I  must  leave  that  to  some 
inspired  psychologist  of  the  future.  I  note  it  here  simply 
because  these  religious  fits  of  mine  were  an  essential  part  of 
my  make-up;  and  what  I  have  referred  to  as  my  emer- 
gence from  the  shell  seems  very  closely  related  to  them. 
And  I  must  insist  once  again  that  I  was  a  very  ordinary 
boy. 

IV 

Another  piece  of  evidence  which  confirms  that  obstinate 
affirmation,  is  to  be  found  in  the  manner  of  my  first  serious 
love-affair. 

I  had  earlier  fallen  temporarily  under  the  glamour  of 
various  distant  influences.  When  I  was  eleven  I  was  des- 
perately in  love  for  some  hours  with  a  red-haired  little 
girl  I  met  at  a  Christmas  party.  Three  years  later  I  had 
a  shy,  adoring  passion  for  the  wife  of  our  Squire — she 
was  then  a  big,  handsome  woman  of  thirty-five  or  so,  and 
was  afterwards  the  subject  of  a  surprising  scandal  in  the 
parish.  (I  am  mentioning  only  the  more  outstanding  ex- 
amples of  my  amorous  precocity.)  And,  at  sixteen,  with  a 
new  boldness,  I  was  seriously  contemplating  the  experi- 
ment of  kissing  our  exceedingly  pretty  new  housemaid. 

That  last  affair,  however,  was  somewhat  different  in 
kind.  It  was  related  to  my  furtive  pleasure  in  contemplat- 
ing the  figure  of  the  lady  I  had  offered  as  a  burnt  sacri- 
fice, rather  than  to  the  spiritual  drench  associated  with  my 
other  absorptions.  Louisa  did  not  appear  to  me  as  a  god- 
dess. She  was  a  dummy,  an  improved  method  of  por- 
traiture. I  urgently  desired  to  embrace  her;  in  my  mind 
I  planned  extravagant  situations  which  would  give  me  the 
desired  opportunity;  but  in  my  thought  of  the  embrace 
the  object  of  desire  was  submissive  to  the  point  of  dul- 


2%  HOUSE-MATES 

ness.  For  some  obscure  reason  I  never  questioned  Louisa's 
willingness  to  be  kissed,  although  she  never  gave  me  the 
least  encouragement,  and  I  have,  now,  no  doubt  whatever 
that  any  rash  experiment  of  mine  would  certainly  have 
ended  in  my  humiliation. 

A  further  sign  of  the  unworthiness  of  these  longings 
towards  Louisa  is  to  be  found  in  their  intermittence.  There 
were  days  on  which  I  deliberately  and  with  the  best  inten- 
tions refrained  from  looking  at  her;  there  were  days  on 
which  I  forgot  that  she  was  anything  but  a  domestic 
servant  My  worst  time  was  Sunday  morning.  I  do  not 
know  whether  this  was  because  there  was  an  added  wicked- 
ness in  giving  thought  to  my  desires  on  that  day,  or 
whether  they  were  not  partly  induced  by  the  contacts  of 
clean  underclothes  which  always  gave  me  a  feeling  of 
physical  fitness;  but  I  -remember  that  the  hour  or  so  I 
spent  alone  between  breakfast  and  eleven  o'clock  service 
was  the  time  when  I  came  nearest  to  putting  my  longings 
into  action.  I  used  to  go  upstairs  when  Louisa  was  doing 
the  bedrooms  and  find  some  excuse  to  watch  her  surrep- 
titiously while  she  was  at  work.  At  my  boldest  I  may 
have  brushed  against  her  as  I  passed,  but  I  never  attempted 
to  make  love  to  her,  nor  even  to  lead  up  to  any  familiarity 
of  speech.  I  did  not  see  the  intrigue  in  those  terms.  To 
me  she  was  nothing  but  a  subject  for  experiment.  And 
I  lacked  the  courage  to  make  the  attempt  not  from  the 
fear  of  rebuff  but  because  it  would  in  some  way  have  out- 
raged my  own  code — the  code  from  which  I  was,  never- 
theless, so  painfully  eager  to  escape. 

But  what  I  have  called  my  first  serious  love-affair  killed 
my  shameful  longings  towards  Louisa  stone  dead. 

The  subject  of  my  new  adoration  was  the  daughter  of 
a  neighbouring  rector,  and  I  first  saw  her  when  she  came 
over  to  sing  in  a  concert  in  our  schoolroom  at  Little  Milton. 
There  was  certainly  good  excuse  for  me  on  this  occasion, 
she  was  undoubtedly  pretty.  That  opinion  does  not  rest 

ely  upon  my  own  infatuated  judgment.  During  the 
concert  I  overheard  various  comments  on  her  good  looks. 


LITTLE  MILTON  25 

She  was  probably  at  her  best  that  night,  a  little  flushed 
with  the  excitement  of  her  performance  (she  had  a  charm- 
ing little  mezzo-soprano  voice  and  sang  with  a  vivacity  and 
a  touch  of  pertness  that  were  distinctly  fascinating),  and 
her  blue  eyes  seemed  to  me  dazzlingly  bright.  She  must 
have  been  about  twenty,  then,  but  to  me  she  had  no  age. 
She  was  an  ideal  of  beauty,  and  in  my  thought  she  was 
raised  to  an  extravagant  power  of  femininity  that  made 
her  something  more  than  mortal.  I  may  add  that  she  was 
in  white  that  evening,  and  that  the  modest  exposure  of 
her  throat  was  but  the  most  distant  recognition  of  evening 
dress. 

The  brightness  of  her,  seen  in  the  glamour  of  those 
surroundings,  would  have  been  enough  to  enrapture  me, 
and  the  brilliance  of  her  effect  was  further  heightened  by 
the  fact  that  her  family  had  a  certain  prestige  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood. The  Lynnekers,  without  any  snobbery,  in  some 
way  conveyed  the  impression  of  breed.  The  three  boys  had 
all  been  at  Oakstone,  and  the  youngest  of  them,  who  was 
two  years  senior  to  me,  had  only  left  at  the  end  of  the 
previous  summer  term.  He  got  his  first-eleven  colours 
when  he  was  only  sixteen,  had  had  a  tremendous  ovation 
on  the  following  prize-day,  and  had  always  figured  to  me 
as  something  of  a  hero  ever  since.  He  was,  in  fact,  a 
worthy  brother  for  so  adorable  a  vision  as  his  sister,  Adela. 
Indeed,  the  circumstances  surrounding  my  new  object  of 
worship  all  helped  to  put  her  on  a  plane  recognisably  higher 
than  that  of  the  commonplace  vicarage  of  Little  Milton. 

She  came  in  to  supper  afterwards,  with  her  elder  sister 
and  a  grown-up  brother  in  deacon's  orders.  I  did  not 
actually  speak  to  her,  but  once  she  definitely  smiled  at  me. 
She  may  have  understood  the  awed  rapture  of  the  gaze  I 
could  not  avert  from  her  as  she  sat  nearly  opposite  to  me  at 
the  supper-table,  and  have  accepted  my  devotion  as  a  modest 
addition  to  the  many  tributes  she  was  receiving  that  night. 

I  only  saw  her  once  afterwards.  Her  father's  parish 
was  five  miles  from  Little  Milton;  and  two  tremendous 
excursions  that  I  made  the  following  summer,  ostensibly 


26  HOUSE-MATES 

to  study  the  Norman  architecture  of  Halton  Church,  were 
not  rewarded  by  any  sight  of  her.  I  had  not  the  courage 
to  go  up  to  the  Rectory  for  the  church  key,  which  I  ob- 
tained from  the  sexton  down  in  the  village;  but  I  spent 
an  hour  on  the  battlements  of  the  church  tower,  a  point 
of  vantage  that  commanded  a  liberal  view  of  the  Lynnekers' 
garden.  Possibly  she  was  away  at  the  time.  I  saw  other 
members  of  the  family  from  my  safe  distance.  The  second 
time  that  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  her  was  in  Medboro'.  She 
was  with  her  father  and  sister,  driving,  in  a  Stanhope ;  and 
she  never  even  saw  me. 

She  eloped  with  the  son  of  the  village  carpenter  rather 
more  than  two  years  later.  My  father  was  dead,  then, 
and  I  was  living  with  my  mother  in  London.  I  had  out- 
lived my  infatuation  by  that  time,  but  the  news  came  to 
me  as  a  shock,  nevertheless.  I  could  not  understand  how 
such  a  young  woman  as  Adela  Lynneker  had  appeared  to 
me,  could  have  married  a  common  workman.  My  mother 
was  equally  surprised.  "It  will  be  a  terrible  blow  to  the 
Lynnekers,"  she  said.  "I  always  thought  she  looked  such 
a  nice  girl."  I  often  wonder,  now,  how  that  elopement 
came  about. 

But  my  present  concern  is  solely  with  the  effect  that 
that  youthful  adoration  had  upon  me,  an  effect  which  can 
only  be  compared  with  my  fits  of  religious  enthusiasm.  I 
was  quite  beautifully  in  love,  boy  as  I  was,  with  Adela 
Lynneker.  I  was  purified.  I  went  about  rapt  in  moods 
of  exaltation.  I  looked  upon  Louisa  with  loathing.  I  had 
no  obscene  material  for  sacrifices,  but  if  I  had  had,  I  should 
have  stamped  upon  the  holocaust  with  a  horrified  disgust 
that  had  not  figured  in  my  earlier  burnt  offering.  In  place 
of  that  disavowal,  I  sacrificed  all  that  I  found  impure  in 
my  thought,  whispering  the  wonderful  invocation  of  the 
sacred  name,  Adela,  whenever  I  was  tempted— as,  for  ex- 
ample, by  the  sight  of  a  book  of  my  father's  with  illustra- 
tions of  Greek  sculpture  that  I  had  often  pored  over,  on 
the  pretence  of  studying  architecture.  And  I  cherished  a 
copy  of  the  concert  programme,  as  a  Catholic  might  have 


LITTLE  MILTON  27 

cherished  a  fragment  of  the  True  Cross.  To  this  day 
there  is  a  certain  magic  associated  with  that  simple  an- 
nouncement: Song.  .  .  .  Die  Forelle.  .  .  .  Schubert.  .  .  . 
Miss  Adela  Lynneker. 

I  am  quite  sure  that  my  first  serious  love-affair  was  very 
good  for  me. 


My  father  died  when  I  was  seventeen. 

He  was  apparently  perfectly  well  when  we  went  to  bed. 
It  was  a  Sunday  night  in  the  middle  of  September,  and  I 
was  going  back  to  Oakstone  for  my  last  year  at  school 
on  the  following  Wednesday.  He  had  preached  twice 
that  day  and  had  eaten  a  very  hearty  supper.  He  always 
had  a  healthy  appetite,  but  on  Sunday  night  he  ate  more 
than  usual.  He  used  to  say  that  preaching  gave  him  "an 
edge."  My  mother  invariably  gave  us  fish  for  supper  on 
Sundays.  She  had  some  theory  as  to  fish  being  a  "brain- 
food,"  a  theory  founded  on  some  chemical  explanation  of 
the  properties  of  phosphorus.  Unhappily  my  father,  when 
he  had  fed  his  brain  with  fish,  went  on  to  feed  his  body 
with  cold  roast  pork.  My  mother  never  attempted  to  re- 
strain his  appetite.  She  ate  very  little  herself,  but  she 
believed  that  "a  man's  frame  required  meat,"  as  she  put 
it;  and  often  worried  me  because  I  was  naturally  inclined 
to  follow  her  example  rather  than  my  father's. 

I  am  a  light  sleeper  and  I  heard  my  mother  come  out 
of  her  bedroom  at  two  o'clock  and  go  downstairs.  I  sat 
up  in  bed  and  listened  for  her  return.  I  had  a  vague  idea 
that  the  house  might  have  been  burgled,  and  wondered  why 
my  father  had  not  gone  instead  of  my  mother.  Then  I 
heard  her  returning.  She  did  not  seem  to  be  hurrying. 
She  went  back  to  the  room  she  shared  with  my  father 
and  closed  the  door  gently  and  deliberately,  as  if  she  were 
afraid  of  waking  the  rest  of  the  household. 

I  was  nearly  asleep  again  when  she  knocked  at  my  door. 
She  came  in  without  waiting  for  my  reply.  A  queer  little 


28  HOUSE-MATES 

figure  she  looked,  in  a  pink  flannel  dressing-gown  and  a 
white  frilled  night-cap.  She  was  carrying  one  of  the  small 
bell-shaped  benzoline  lamps  we  used  instead  of  candles,  and 
she  had  turned  it  too  high  so  that  the  little  pencil  of  flame 
wavered  up  into  a  thin  wreath  of  gloomy  smoke. 

"Wilfred,  there's  something  the  matter  with  your  father," 
she  said  with  a  little  running  anxiety  that  nearly  tripped 
her  speech.  "I  went  to  fetch  him  a  mustard  leaf  and  when 
I  got  back  ...  I  don't  understand  what's  wrong  with  him. 
He's  so  quiet  now.  I  wish  you'd  come  and  look  at  him." 

I  began  to  ask  questions.  I  think  my  chief  feeling  at  the 
moment  was  one  of  slight  annoyance.  I  tried  to  diagnose 
my  father's  symptoms  before  I  got  out  of  bed. 

"Has  he  got  any  pain?"  I  asked. 

My  mother  looked  at  me  as  if  I  had  propounded  some 
deeply  obscure  problem  that  she  was  quite  unable  to  grapple 
with.  "I  wish  you'd  come  and  look  at  him,"  she  repeated. 
She  was  holding  the  lamp  all  askew,  and  the  wreath  of 
dark  smoke  waved  a  shaky  response  to  the  trembling  of 
her  hand. 

"I  say,  mother,  is  there  anything  wrong?"  I  said.  Her 
fear  was  being  communicated  to  me,  but  it  was  for  her  that 
I  was  afraid.  She  looked  so  odd,  I  thought.  I  was  not 
quite  sure  whether  she  was  not  walking  in  her  sleep.  I  had 
no  qualms  concerning  that  great  strong  man,  my  father.  • 

"Oh!  Wilfred,  do  some  quickly,"  she  said. 

"All  right.  Look  out  with  that  lamp,  mother,"  I  re- 
turned, as  I  got  out  of  bed.  I  expected  her  to  go  back  to 
her  room  while  I  put  on  my  trousers  and  slippers,  but  she 
stood  perfectly  still  in  the  same  attitude,  and  stared  at  the 
bed  with  the  same  look  of  puzzled  apprehension. 

"You  had  better  take  the  lamp,  dear,"  she  said,  when  I 
had  partly  dressed. 

"Why?  Aren't  you  coming?"  I  asked  impatiently.  The 
truth  is  that  I  was  a  little  frightened  of  her. 

She  held  the  lamp  towards  me.  "You  go  first,"  she  said, 
and  she  followed  me  no  further  than  the  threshold  of  the 
other  room. 


LITTLE  MILTON  29 

My  father  lay  on  his  back,  with  his  mouth  wide  open, 
and  I  thought  that  his  lips  and  face  seemed  a  strange 
colour.  His  eyes  were  half-open  and  the  eyeballs  horribly 
rolled  up. 

"I  say,  pater,  is  anything  wrong?"  I  asked. 

I  did  not  guess  even  then  that  he  was  dead,  but  I  was 
terrified.  I  retreated  from  the  bed  and  looked  round  for 
my  mother.  She  was  standing  just  outside  the  room,  with 
her  two  hands  clasped  over  her  mouth.  She  looked  rather  as 
if  something  had  set  her  teeth  on  edge. 

"It's— it's  some  sort  of  a  fit,"  I  said.  "I'd  better  go  and 
get  the  doctor." 

My  mother  nodded  and  took  her  hands  away  from  her 
mouth.  "Perhaps  I'd  better  call  the  servants?"  she  said. 

And  then  we  hung  for  a  moment  in  a  ridiculous  sus- 
pense as  to  whether  we  ought  to  wake  the  two  maids.  We 
did  not  discuss  the  point,  but  we  looked  at  one  another 
with  evident  hesitation. 

I  solved  that  by  putting  the  responsibility  upon  her.  "Yes, 
take  the  lamp,  and  go  up  to  them,"  I  said.  "I  must  get 
my  things  on.  And,  mother,  I  think  you  ought  to  do 
something,  while  I'm  gone.  Give  him  brandy  or  some- 
thing." 

We  spoke  in  whispers;  I  from  some  fear  of  disturbing 
the  living;  my  mother  from  the  older,  more  potent  fear 
of  disturbing  the  dead.  She  must  have  known  that  my 
father  was  dead  when  she  came  into  my  room. 

It  may  appear  a  little  strange  that  I  had  not  then,  nor 
for  the  next  hour  or  so,  even  a  passing  apprehension  of  my 
father's  death.  But  life  wears  such  a  different  aspect  when 
it  is  regarded  from  the  cool  vantage  ground  of  one  who 
looks  back.  There  in  the  baffling  confusion  of  the  tragedy 
I  had  no  quietness  to  weigh  an  inference,  no  time  to  con- 
sider. And  suddenly  waked  from  sleep,  as  I  had  been, 
my  mind  had  accepted  without  question  the  first  statement 
my  mother  had  made.  There  was  "something  the  matter" 
with  him,  she  had  said,  and  I  had  understood  her  state- 
ment in  the  terms  of  my  common  experience.  He  was  not 


80  HOUSE-MATES 

well,  I  concluded,  and  my  sight  of  him  had  only  intensified 
my  realisation  of  his  illness. 

"My  father  has  had  some  kind  of  fit,"  was  the  manner 
of  my  announcement  to  the  unqualified  assistant  who  lived 
in  the  village.  I  could  get  no  further  than  that. 

The  boyish  impetuosity  of  my  onslaught  upon  the  door 
of  his  lodgings  had  brought  Mr.  Fernsby  to  his  window 
with  commendable  promptitude.  He  was  a  queer  little 
hunchback  with  a  big  head,  who  managed  a  certain  effect  of 
dignity  by  wearing  a  long  beard.  The  explanation  of  his 
failure  to  obtain  a  diploma  was  probably  his  inebriety,  al- 
though it  is  true  that  might  equally  well  have  been  an  effect. 
He  was  a  shrewd  little  fellow  enough,  and  all  that  we  had 
to  depend  upon  in  case  of  emergency; — the  nearest  quali- 
fied doctor  lived  at  Nenton,  three  miles  away. 

"Apoplexy?"  Fernsby  asked,  exhibiting  the  same  symp- 
toms of  procrastination  I  had  shown  when  my  mother  had 
waked  me. 

"I  don't  know,"  I  said.  "He's  lying  frightfully  still  with 
his  mouth  open  and  his  eyes  look  awfully  funny." 

Fernsby  either  evaluated  that  at  its  full  significance,  or 
considered  that  my  unprofessional  diagnostics  were  not 
likely  to  help  him.  "I'll  come  at  once,"  he  said,  and  with- 
drew into  the  obscurity  of  his  bedroom.  He  had  looked 
quite  big  and  impressive  when  I  saw  only  his  head. 

I  waited  outside  for  him.  I  was  afraid  to  go  back  to 
the  Vicarage  by  myself;  afraid  of  my  own  incompetence 
to  deal  with  the  unknown  terrors  of  serious  illness.  I  knew 
that  my  mother  and  the  two  maids  would  depend  upon 
me  and  I  could  think  of  nothing  that  ought  to  be  done.  I 
was  singularly  lacking  in  confidence  and  independence  at 
seventeen;  but  then  so  are  the  majority  of  boys. 

Fernsby  hardly  spoke  as  he  trotted  beside  me  on  our 
way  back,  but  now  that  I  had  in  tow  some  more  or  less 
dependable  expert  who  would  take  all  the  responsibility  of 
decisive  action,  the  excitement  that  had  been  subconsciously 
working  m  me  found  an  outlet  in  chatter.  I  told  Fernsby 
every  detail  of  my  conversation  with  my  mother  and  of  my 


LITTLE  MILTON  31 

brief  examination  of  my  father ;  I  told  him  the  whole  story 
two  or  three  times  with  improving  accuracy. 

Fernsby's  single  question  displayed  a  shrewdness  that 
seemed  to  me,  then,  a  trifle  callous. 

"What  did  he  have  for  supper  ?"  he  asked ;  and  if  I  was 
a  little  offended  by  what  I  regarded  as  an  attempt  to  com- 
mon the  importance  of  my  news,  I  answered  him  to  the 
last  potato. 

And  below  all  the  ebullition  of  my  excited  chatter,  an- 
other personality,  reserved  and  timid,  held  itself  aloof, 
occupied  with  some  general  impression  of  things  that  had 
little  relevance  to  all  this  apparent  preoccupation  with 
the  new  experience  I  was  suffering.  When  I  look  back, 
now,  I  see  that  rather  fair-haired,  callow  youth  of  seven- 
teen, from  outside.  Memory  recalls  a  picture  of  him  and 
the  sound  of  his  voice,  but  nothing  of  what  he  felt.  I 
watch  him  walking  beside  the  queer  little  image  of  Fernsby, 
whose  dwarfed  figure,  ceremoniously  buttoned  into  the 
ridiculous  little  frock-coat  that  was  his  only  wear,  makes 
the  boy  look  unusually  tall  and  graceful. 

But  my  vision  of  the  boy  fades  when  I  recall  the  beauty 
of  the  night;  the  waning  moon  with  one  edge  just  begin- 
ning to  melt  into  the  deep  hollow  of  the  sky;  or  the  rigid 
solemnity  of  black  trees  in  the  avenue,  every  leaf  stiff  and 
alert  in  the  suspense  of  an  absolute  calm.  And  although  I 
see,  then,  with  his  eyes  and  feel  with  his  senses,  I  seem  to 
have  no  part  in  the  conversation  he  is  holding  with  the 
little  doctor. 

(Was  my  sight  of  the  boy  the  vision  of  a  marionette 
that  was  the  physical  expression  of  myself,  constantly 
changing,  dying  and  being  renewed  from  within?  And  if 
so,  why  did  the  renewal  fall  always  into  such  similar  com- 
binations, so  that  when  I  look  now  at  a  photograph  of  the 
youth,  I  can  still  recognise  his  likeness  to  the  image  I  see 
in  the  mirror?  This  flesh  I  am  wearing  is  not  the  same 
I  wore  then,  but  some  force  (of  inertia  perhaps?)  has  built 
the  cells  of  it  always  on  the  original  plan.  It  is  possible 
that  if  the  will  were  resolute  enough,  it  might  change  the 


32  HOUSE-MATES 

shape  of  the  man's  physical  expression !  I  can,  indeed,  dis- 
cern small  but  characteristic  changes  in  my  own  features— 
the  mouth  has  altered,  and,  I  think,  the  eyes  and  the  chin.) 

My  mother  was  downstairs  when  we  got  to  the  house. 
She  took  Fernsby  up  to  my  father's  room  without  attempt- 
ing any  account  of  his  illness,  and  returned  almost  imme- 
diately to  join  me  in  the  dining-room. 

"How  is  he,  now?"  I  asked.  My  excitement  seemed  to 
have  withered  as  I  entered  the  house.  Already  the  first 
whispers  of  a  dreadful  doubt  were  coming  to  me. 

My  mother  shook  her  head  without  speaking.  She  was 
sitting,  very  upright,  on  a  chair  by  the  door,  and  her  two 
hands  were  up  at  her  mouth  again  with  that  same  sugges- 
tion of  allaying  some  almost  unbearable  nervous  pain. 

I  turned  down  the  lamp  a  little  and  sat  in  one  of  the 
armchairs  by  the  fireplace.  The  room  wore  an  unfamiliar 
aspect;  it  seemed  in  some  way  as  if  it,  too,  had  been  dis- 
turbed in  its  rest,  and  was  unable  to  adjust  itself  to  the 
common  appearance  of  every  day.  The  lamp's  steady  bril- 
liance was  an  unaccustomed  intrusion,  imposed  upon  the 
room  by  extraordinary  circumstances. 

"You  don't  think  it's  serious,  mother,  do  you?"  I  asked 
after  a  few  seconds  of  listening  silence. 

She  nodded  and  looked  at  me  apprehensively. 

"Very  serious  ?"  I  said,  approaching  a  climax  I  dared  not 
as  yet  boldly  face.  And  then  as  she  nodded  again,  I  went 
on:  "But  I  say,  mother,  you  don't  mean  .  .  ." 

I  do  not  believe  that  she  could  have  dared  a  complete 
admission  of  the  truth  just  then,  but  she  was  saved  from 
any  equivocation  by  the  return  of  Fernsby.  He  had  not 
been  upstairs  more  than  a  minute.  My  mother  instantly 
got  up  and  met  him  in  the  hall.  I  could  not  hear  what  they 
said,  but  I  knew  then.  I  knew  so  surely  that  I  did  not  even 
seek  for  any  confirmation. 

I  heard  little  Fernsby  go  out,  and  then  my  mother  came 
back  to  me  in  the  dining-room. 

"I  shall  go  and  lie  down  in  the  spare  room,"  she  said. 
"Mr.  Fernsby  says  there  may  have  to  be  an  inquest." 


LITTLE  MILTON  33 

I  made  no  attempt  to  detain  her.  We,  neither  of  us,  at 
that  moment,  sought  any  consolation  from  the  other.  I 
was  self-consciously  facing  a  dramatic  situation.  I  did  not 
know  what  I  ought  to  do;  and  it  is  the  truth  that  I  had  not, 
then,  any  sense  either  of  loss  or  of  sorrow.  And  my  mother 
was  suffering  from  an  immense  shock.  She  had  not,  had 
never  had,  a  passionate  love  for  my  father;  but  the  sight 
of  him,  so  unexpectedly  dead,  had  frozen  her  sensibilities 
for  the  time  being. 

She  had  a  reaction  next  day.  She  collapsed  as  if  the 
strain  had  been  suddenly  released.  She  was  seriously  ill 
for  nearly  a  fortnight,  and  was  unable  to  attend  the  fun- 
eral. .  .  . 

I  fell  fast  asleep  in  the  arm-chair  in  the  dining-room. 
For  some  reason  the  thought  of  going  to  bed  again  seemed 
incongruous,  and  even  a  little  heartless.  When  I  woke  I 
was  very  cold ;  the  lamp  was  nearly  out,  and  the  room  was 
taking  on  its  old  familiar  aspect  in  the  first  light  of  a 
September  sunrise. 

I  discovered  then  that  I,  too,  must  have  been  immensely 
disturbed  by  the  sight  of  my  father's  body.  I  found  that 
I  had  forgotten  to  take  off  my  night-shirt  before  putting  on 
my  every  day  clothes. 

VI 

The  death  of  my  father  affected  me  very  deeply  when 
I  had  had  time  to  recover  from  the  immediate  paralysis 
of  the  shock;  but  for  a  few  hours  my  imagination  was 
numbed,  just  as  the  body  may  be  numbed  by  the  concussion 
of  a  severe  wound.  Pain  came  to  me  gradually.  Even 
when  I  awoke  in  the  cold  dining-room  to  an  intellectual  reali- 
sation of  our  loss,  I  was  unaware  of  suffering,  and  won- 
dered at  my  own  indifference.  My  insensibility  seemed  to 
me  a  horrible  thing,  and  yet  I  was,  in  a  way,  a  little  proud 
of  it;  as  if  I  had  come  through  some  great  ordeal  without 
hurt. 

The  first  apprehension   of    some  terrifying  injury  that 


34,  HOUSE-MATES 

had  been  done  to  me  came  when  I  went  down  to  the  river 
to  bathe — I  had  no  desire  to  sleep  again;  it  was  after  six 
o'clock  and  the  sun  was  already  beginning  to  shine  weakly 
through  the  mist.  The  lawn  was  white  with  dew,  and 
as  I  went  down  through  the  garden  I  repeated  a  phrase  of 
my  father's — "a  catch  of  frost  at  sunrise,"  would  have 
been  his  comment  on  the  morning's  weather. 

Perhaps  that  characteristic  sentence  of  his  first  began 
to  draw  my  attention  to  the  wound  I  carried ;  and  the  bath 
and  its  associations  necessarily  confirmed  my  realisation 
that  the  hurt  would  surely  ache.  The  anaesthesia  was  pass- 
ing ;  the  nerve  ends  were  beginning  to  smart. 

And  as  I  walked  back  to  the  house  the  very  beauty  of 
the  morning  increased  my  pain.  We  were  going  to  have 
one  of  those  glorious,  still  days  that  come  only  in  Septem- 
ber. The  mist  was  dispersing,  and  the  drenched  fields  were 
no  longer  dead  white  as  if  they  had  been  covered  with  a 
smooth  blanket  of  thistle-down ;  now,  each  tiny  globe  seemed 
to  have  been  miraculously  clarified,  transformed  from  milk 
to  crystal-clear  water.  The  smoke  from  the  labourers'  cot- 
tages lifted  from  each  chimney  in  a  perfect,  slender  column, 
with  never  a  bend  or  a  break  between  its  base  and  the 
feathered  capital  of  its  fading  dispersion  into  the  hazy  sky. 
The  little  birds  were  twittering  and  peeking  from  every 
hedge ;  up  behind  the  vicarage  the  rooks  were  in  full  chorus ; 
and  from  the  glebe  farm  came  the  low,  monotonous  hum- 
ming of  a  threshing  machine,  with  its  steady  rising  moan, 
followed  by  the  sudden  fall  of  a  major  third  as  fresh  corn 
was  thrown  into  the  feed. 

At  that  moment  I  had  only  a  sense  of  loss.  I  had  not  been 
intimate  with  my  father,  I  knew  nothing  of  his  inner  life, 
but  he  had  been  a  companion  and  I  missed  him.  I  wanted 
to  find  joy  in  that  wonderful  morning,  and  I  could  not  be- 
cause he  was  not  there  to  share  it.  It  seemed  to  me  an  ir- 
reparable calamity  that  he  could  never  again  be  there  with 
me  to  echo  my  delight  in  the  stillness  and  beauty  of  a  Sep- 
tember day.  My  mother  did  not  respond  to  those  influ- 
ences. She  turned  them  all  into  a  moral  lesson  upon  the 


LITTLE  MILTON  35 

necessity  for  thankfulness,  and  even  at  seventeen  I  was 
dimly  aware  that  while  she  thanked  God  with  her  lips,  my 
father  and  I  thanked  him  better  by  the  intensity  of  our 
enjoyment.  We  could  be  glad  with  the  morning ;  my  mother 
looked,  nodded  a  perfunctory  appreciation  and  went  about 
her  work.  If  she  had  so  thanked  a  friend  for  some  price- 
less gift,  she  would  surely  have  been  accused  of  ingratitude. 

But  it  was  my  own  loss  that  hurt  me,  then ;  the  real  ache 
did  not  come  till  the  afternoon.  It  was  the  report  of  the 
Nenton  doctor  that  brought  home  to  me  the  true  sorrow 
of  my  father's  death.  There  was  to  be  an  autopsy,  and 
the  thought  of  that  seemed  to  me  quite  unbearable.  I  could 
not  endure  the  idea  that  his  body  should  be  so  irreverently 
mangled. 

I  lay  in  the  woods  that  afternoon,  prostrate  with  a  grief 
I  could  not  quite  understand.  I  found  no  consolation  in 
the  thought  of  my  father's  soul  being  in  Heaven;  I  could 
not  believe  that  he  would  find  happiness  there.  I  felt  that 
he  must  be  lonely  and  suffering  even  as  I  was;  and  the 
longing  to  console  and  help  him,  and  the  bitterness  of  my 
impotence,  threw  me  finally  into  an  agony  of  tears. 

And  I  never  found  any  true  solace  for  that  grief.  Time 
slowly  took  all  the  sting  and  the  ache  out  of  it;  but  quite 
recently  I  felt  again  the  desire  to  comfort  my  father  in  his 
loneliness. 


II 

HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN 


MY  Another  and  I  went  to  live  at  Hampstead  after  my 
father's  death.  We  took  a  tiny  house  just  off  the 
North  End  Road,  not  far  from  the  "Bull  &  Bush."  It  had 
originally  been  decided  that  I  was  to  go  into  Heaton  & 
Baxter's  office  when  I  was  eighteen,  but,  now,  it  was  deemed 
advisable  for  me  to  cut  my  last  year  at  Oakstone  and  begin 
to  serve  my  articles  without  delay.  Mr.  Baxter  was  very 
decent  about  the  affair  and  accepted  £150  for  my  indentures, 
a  sum  that  was  exactly  half  the  firm's  usual  fee. 

Our  choice  of  Hampstead  was  determined  by  my  mother's 
wish  to  live  near  her  elder  brother — the  younger  one,  the 
scapegrace,  had  been  dead  some  years. 

This  one  surviving  uncle  of  mine,  David  Williams — my 
father  had  outlived  his  two  brothers — was  a  solicitor,  with 
offices  in  Moorgate  Street.  His  business  was  almost  en- 
tirely confined  to  conveyancing,  and  although  he  had,  long 
since,  accumulated  a  respectable  fortune,  he  continued  at 
sixty-three  to  devote  the  greater  part  of  his  time  to  his 
profession.  He  had  a  big  house  with  a  fine  garden,  nearly 
at  the  top  of  Heath  Street,  and  drove  down  to  the  City 
every  day  in  his  brougham.  He  and  his  wife  had  only 
one  child,  a  daughter,  Gladys,  who  was  four  years  my 
junior. 

I  had  seen  very  little  of  these  relations  of  mine  before 
we  came  to  live  in  Hampstead.  Gladys  and  my  aunt  Agatha 
had  twice  stayed  at  Little  Milton  for  a  few  days ;  and  once 

36 


HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN          37 

my  mother  and  I  had  stayed  in  Heath  Street  during  my 
one  and  only  visit  to  London. 

Gladys  was  a  fair,  thin  child  who  treated  me  with  a 
mixture  of  fear  and  contempt.  I  had  disliked  her  quite 
actively  after  my  visit  to  Heath  Street;  she  was  eleven 
then,  and  had  given  me  to  understand  that  she  regarded 
boys  as  a  very  inferior  creation. 

Our  relations  were  a  little  changed  when  I  came  up  to 
Hampstead  to  live.  I  was  only  seventeen,  and  still  a  gauche 
youth  in  country-made  clothes,  with  stove-pipe  trousers  at 
least  a  couple  of  inches  too  short.  But  I  was  on  the  verge 
of  comparative  independence,  and  I  could  afford  to  treat 
my  little  girl  cousin  with  an  air  of  tolerance.  I  was  re- 
lieved to  find  that  I  could  put  on  the  airs  of  an  adult,  and 
return  the  snubbing  I  had  received  two  years  before. 
Gladys's  method  of  reply  was  to  toss  her  head  and  look 
a  trifle  sulky.  Even  at  thirteen  she  was  too  dignified  to  be 
pert,  or,  perhaps,  she  had  not  the  wit.  There  was  only  one 
thing  I  liked  about  her.  She  had  beautifully  clear  blue 
eyes ;  they  reminded  me  of  Adela  Lynneker. 

My  uncle  was  a  curious  mixture  of  old  fashions  and 
new  ideas.  He  was  a  clean-shaven  man  with  an  Early- Vic- 
torian type  of  face — he  could  have  worn  Dundreary 
whiskers  without  exciting  attention — and  the  cut  of  his 
frock-coat  and  the  shape  of  his  top  hat  enhanced  the  sug- 
gestion that  he  belonged  to  the  'Forties.  When  I  had  stayed 
at  Ken  Lodge,  I  had  in  my  careless,  youthful  way  set  him 
down  as  a  prejudiced  old  fogey,  and  had  thought  no  better 
of  him  for  being  a  "Radical"  in  politics.  (No  doubt  some- 
thing of  this  attitude  was  due  to  my  father.  I  do  not  think 
that  he  and  Uncle  David  were  ever  on  very  friendly  terms.) 
But  when  my  mother  and  I  came  to  live  so  near  her  brother, 
and  we  saw  him  and  his  family  almost  daily,  I  gradually 
changed  my  opinion  of  him. 

The  discovery  that  he  was  not  a  strict  Sabbatarian  first 
inclined  me  to  regard  him  with  more  favour.  He  always 
attended  mattins  at  the  Parish  Church,  setting  out  decor- 
ously with  his  wife  and  Gladys,  in  the  approved  mid- Vic- 


88  HOUSE-MATES 

torian  manner.  But  after  that  duty  had  been  decently  per- 
formed, he  had  no  prejudices  about  the  keeping  of  the 
Lord's  Day.  Indeed,  he  frequently  had  friends  in  to  play 
whist  on  Sunday  evening. 

My  mother  regarded  this  laxity  with  grave  misgivings, 
but  to  me  it  seemed  a  delightful  release.  I  accepted  Chris- 
tianity, spirit  and  dogma,  without  one  doubt  or  question, 
but  the  tendency  of  my  youth  was  towards  revolt  against 
all  the  bigotry  of  Puritanism.  Secretly  I  threw  over  Sab- 
batarianism and  the  doctrine  of  Eternal  Punishment  be- 
fore I  had  been  in  London  twelve  months ;  but  another  year 
elapsed  before  I  dared  confess  my  apostasy  to  my  mother. 

Uncle  David  managed  all  our  affairs  for  us  after  we 
left  Milton.  My  father  had  left  a  little  money;  enough  to 
pay  the  ecclesiastical  dilapidations  and  the  cost  of  my  articles 
and  to  purchase  an  annuity  of  just  over  £100  a  year  for  my 
mother.  She  protested  at  first  against  sinking  all  the  capital 
in  this  way,  but  I  took  my  uncle's  part,  and  persuaded  her 
that  I  should  never  need  the  money.  I  was  young  and 
eager,  and  the  prospect  of  a  possible  £1500  coming  to  me 
at  my  mother's  death  did  not  interest  me  nearly  so  much 
as  the  thought  of  present  necessaries  for  both  of  us.  I  knew 
little  enough  about  the  value  of  money,  but  I  was  a  little 
staggered  at  the  idea  of  living  on  £2  a  week;  and  if  the 
money  were  invested  in  the  ordinary  way  it  would,  I  was 
told,  produce  little  more  than  half  that  amount. 

My  uncle's  attitude  is  not  quite  so  comprehensible.  The 
truth  of  the  matter  is  that  he  had  a  vein  of  miserliness 
which  cropped  out  on  occasions  such  as  this.  He  knew  very 
well  that  my  mother  and  I  could  not  live  on  £100  a  year, 
and  had  made  up  his  mind  to  double  that  income  for  her. 
But  while  he  was  willing  to  allow  her  two  pounds  a  week, 
he  stuck  at  three.  There  is  no  explaining  these  queer  kinks 
in  a  man's  mind.  My  uncle  died  worth  £ 6,000  a  year.  At 
the  time  he  promised  my  mother  that  he  would  provide  for 
me  later  on;  but  he  never  put  that  promise  in  writing,  and 
I  was  not  told  of  it  until  my  mother  was  on  her  death- 
bed. 


HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN          39 

The  third  person  in  the  Ken  Lodge  household,  my  aunt 
Agatha,  was  a  professional  invalid.  She  never,  as  far  as 
I  knew,  was  seriously  ill  at  any  time,  and  she  is  still  alive ; 
but  she  devoted  her  best  energies  to  curing  various  imagi- 
nary weaknesses  in  herself,  and  so  dwelt  on  the  thought 
of  her  ailments  that  she  was,  in  fact,  never  really  well. 


ii 

The  offices  of  Heaton  &  Baxter  are  in  Lincoln's  Inn ;  and 
I  began  my  work  there  on  a  Monday  morning  at  the  end 
of  October,  1894. 

I  had  been  to  the  offices  once  before,  with  my  mother,  to 
sign  the  agreement  for  my  articles;  but  whether  I  was  in 
a  more  receptive  mood  or  more  nervous  on  the  second  occa- 
sion, the  impression  that  remains  most  clearly  in  my  mind 
is  of  my  timid  approach  and  of  the  presentation  of  myself 
on  that  Monday  morning. 

The  offices  were  on  the  fourth  and  fifth  floors,  a  position 
chosen  for  the  sake  of  light  rather  than  of  economy;  and 
something  about  the  tedious  ascent  of  those  eight  flights 
of  stone  stairs  had  a  curiously  depressing  effect  upon  me. 
The  damp  smell  of  the  stone,  the  suggestion  of  mustiness 
that  came  from  the  solicitors'  offices  on  the  way  up,  a 
general  deadness  and  moist,  cold  stuffiness  about  the  whole 
building  gave  me  the  feeling  that  I  was  going  into  a  prison. 
The  feeling  was  not  justified.  Heaton  &  Baxter's  offices 
were  light  and  warm,  and  the  routine  of  work  there  was 
certainly  not  dull.  But  I  never  lost  my  distaste  for  those 
stairs.  There  have  been  mornings  in  spring  when  I  have 
hesitated  at  the  doorway,  on  the  verge  of  deciding  for  some 
great  adventure,  when  it  needed  but  some  tiny  further 
inducement  to  make  me  throw  up  architecture  as  a  profes- 
sion, and  go  straight  away  to  Australia  or  Canada,  to  some 
place  where  I  might  make  a  living  under  the  sky.  If  only 
I  could  have  run  away  without  preparation ;  turned  my  back 
then  and  there  on  those  repulsive  stone  stairs,  and  taken 


40  HOUSE-MATES 

ship  East  or  West  or  South  the  same  morning,  I  should 
certainly  have  gone;  but  there  was  always  my  mother  to 
be  considered.  I  could  not  have  left  her  without  warn- 
ing; and  when  I  was  at  home  with  her  in  Hampstead,  the 
impulse  to  run  away  appeared  wild  and  foolish. 

A  tall,  dark  young  man  of  twenty-four  or  so  passed 
me  as  I  was  going  up  on  that  first  day  of  my  pupilage. 
He  was  very  smartly  dressed  in  a  morning  coat  with  braided 
edges,  dark  grey  trousers,  top  hat  and  brown  leather  gloves. 
He  mounted  the  stairs  quickly  but  with  a  curious  delibera- 
tion; he  went  two  steps  at  a  time,  emphasising  each  rise 
with  a  nod  as  if  he  were  counting  or  marking  the  beat  of 
some  tune  that  ran  in  his  head.  He  passed  me  on  the  second 
floor  landing,  stared  at  me  for  an  instant  as  he  went  by, 
and  then  continued  his  ascent  with  the  same  oddly  mechan- 
ical dance. 

I  wondered  whether  he  were  Mr.  Heaton's  son.  I  took  it 
for  granted  that  he  was  bound  for  the  same  destination  as 
myself. 

I  was  taken  to  Mr.  Baxter's  room  again  when  I  had  been 
admitted  to  the  office.  He  was  a  man  of  sixty,  then,  I 
should  imagine ;  a  big,  rather  bluff  man  with  a  square  grey 
beard  that  had  a  distinct  tinge  of  blue  in  it — his  hair  had 
originally  been  very  dark — and  rather  humorous  brown  eyes. 
The  shape  of  his  head  and  the  cut  of  his  beard  gave  him 
a  recognisable  likeness  to  the  late  Lord  Salisbury. 

He  greeted  me  with  a  pleasant  nod. 

"Well,  young  man,  ready  to  start  work  ?"  he  asked,  and 
got  up  immediately.  I  learnt  afterwards  that  he  was  al- 
ways nervous  with  new  assistants  or  pupils.  "Let  me  see," 
he  went  on,  "you've  had  no  experience,  have  you?  Hm! 
well,  you'd  better  begin  by  copying  a  sheet  of  building  con- 
struction, just  to  learn  the  use  of  your  tools.  I'll  put  you 
up  with  Kemplay  and  Geddes  and  tell  them  to  look  after 
you.  Come  along." 

He  led  the  way  back  into  the  lobby  and  then  to  a  little 
circular  iron  staircase  that  ran  up  out  of  what  once  might 


HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN          41 

have  been  a  deep  cupboard — a  convenient  means  of  com- 
munication that  had  been  added  by  the  firm  when  they  took 
the  offices. 

"Mind  your  head,"  he  warned  me. 

Geddes  turned  out  to  be  the  smart  young  man  who  had 
passed  me  on  the  landing.  Kemplay  was  a  man  of  between 
thirty  and  forty,  short  and  thickset,  with  very  curly  dark 
hair  and  a  yellow  complexion. 

I  was  very  shy  when  left  alone  with  them.  I  felt  like 
a  new  boy  at  school  and  was  prepared,  I  think,  for  a  certain 
amount  of  chaff  or  even  bullying.  But  both  Kemplay — who 
occupied  the  position  of  "manager"  to  the  firm — and  Geddes 
were  exceedingly  polite,  if  faintly  contemptuous.  Kemplay 
found  a  drawing  of  a  roof  truss,  pinned  down  a  sheet  of 
Whatman's  paper  on  a  double  elephant  board,  and  gave  me 
a  few  instructions  concerning  the  management  of  a  T 
square  and  a  scale.  After  that  I  was  left  to  puzzle  out 
for  myself  a  method  of  reproducing  the  roof-truss.  The 
other  two  plunged  almost  immediately  into  a  technical 
discussion  concerning  the  detail  of  some  plan  upon  which 
they  were  privately  engaged  in  the  evenings — a  set  of  com- 
petition drawings  for  baths  and  wash-houses  in  South  Lon- 
don, as  a  matter  of  fact. 

Kemplay  came  over  to  me  once  or  twice  in  the  course 
of  the  morning  and  corrected  my  blundering  with  a  sort 
of  official  good  nature ;  but  Geddes  addressed  no  remark  to 
me  until  he  was  going  out  to  lunch.  He  had  changed  his 
coat  and  was  untying  the  little  cloth  apron  he  wore  round 
his  middle  as  a  protection  against  the  edge  of  the  d,rawing- 
board.  He  paused  by  my  stool  and  looked  at  the  brand- 
new  box  of  instruments  my  mother  and  I  had  bought  on  the 
day  we  had  come  to  sign  the  agreement. 

"Whew!"  he  whistled.     "Stanley,  eh?    Swagger!" 

"Mr.  Baxter  told  me  to  go  there,"  I  explained. 

"How  much?"  Geddes  enquired. 

"Five  pounds  ten,"  I   said. 

"Jolly,"  was  Geddes'  only  further  comment,  but  I  under- 
stood that  he  had  intended  his  remarks  as  an  overture  of 


42  HOUSE-MATES 

friendship,  however  condescending  on  his  side.  I  was  only 
seventeen  and  my  dress  proclaimed  me  a  provincial;  but  I 
was  an  articled  pupil  with  five  pounds  to  spend  on  drawing 
instruments,  and  must  sooner  or  later  be  admitted  to  the 
fellowship  of  my  social  equals. 

Geddes  had,  also,  served  his  articles  with  Heaton  & 
Baxter,  and  was  now  staying  on  as  an  "improver"  at  a 
nominal  salary  of  £i  a  week.  He  was  younger  than  he 
looked.  I  discovered  later  that  he  was  only  just  twenty- 
one  when  I  came  to  the  office. 

The  afternoon  was  more  convivial  than  the  morning.  I 
had  my  lunch  at  an  A.B.C.  in  Carey  Street,  and  when  I 
came  back  at  a  quarter  to  three  I  found  Kemplay  at  his 
desk  smoking  a  pipe,  and  Geddes  with  a  cigarette,  standing 
in  front  of  the  fireplace. 

I  changed  my  coat  and  returned  meekly  to  my  job  of 
copying  the  roof-truss. 

"Do  you  smoke?"  asked  Geddes,  after  a  minute  or  two, 
addressing  me. 

"Not  yet,"  I  said,  and  then,  feeling  that  it  was  time  I 
did  something  to  assert  myself,  I  added,  "I  only  left  school 
last  July." 

"Where  were  you?"  Geddes  encouraged  me. 

"Oakstone,"  I  told  him.  "I  don't  know  if  you  have  ever 
heard  of  it." 

"Oh!  yes,  rather,"  Geddes  said.  "Pretty  decent  school, 
isn't  it?  I  was  at  the  City  of  London." 

"Were  you?"  I  replied  in  a  note  of  admiration. 

Geddes  completed  that  paragraph  with  a  nod,  and  went 
on.  "Jolly  office,  this.  It  isn't  every  office  that  you  can 
smoke  in.  We're  allowed  to  smoke  after  two  o'clock. 
That's  old  Heaton's  doing.  You  never  see  him  without  a 
pi?«e'  Ba* ter  doesn>t  smoke— he's  a  bachelor,  you  know." 

"I  see,"  I  remarked,  trying  to  look  intelligent.  I  was  not 
quite  sure  whether  Geddes  intended  to  imply  any  connexion 
between  Mr.  Baxter's  two  forms  of  continence.  But  I  was 
not  encouraged  to  offer  any  further  contribution  to  the 
progress  of  the  acquaintanceship.  Geddes'  glance  had  sud- 


HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN         43 

denly  gone  through  me,  and  he  appeared  lost  in  some  deep 
abstraction  that  engaged  his  whole  attention.  He  stood 
gazing  at  nothing  for  a  moment  or  two,  and  then  walked, 
still  abstrusely  occupied,  to  his  board. 

"Thirteen  four  and  a  half,"  he  remarked,  addressing  his 
drawing,  "with  a  rise  of  six  and  a  half,  gives  twenty-five 
stairs.  .  .  ."  Then  he  threw  the  end  of  his  cigarette  into 
the  fireplace  and  plunged  into  his  work.  He  did  not  speak 
again  until  nearly  five  o'clock. 

Kemplay  visited  me  occasionally  during  the  afternoon 
and  gave  me  mild  encouragement.  The  rest  of  my  time 
was  occupied  in  my  mechanical  copying,  with  brief  intervals 
of  staring  out  through  the  window  at  the  people  who  passed 
diagonally  across  the  gardens  of  Lincoln  Inn  Fields.  Nearly 
all  of  them,  whether  they  walked  briskly  and  with  obvious 
intentness,  or  lounged  a  trifle  drearily,  hopelessly,  perhaps; 
nearly  all  made  their  way  from  our  corner  by  the  chapel 
up  to  the  centre,  and  so  far  as  I  could  see  out  at  the  farther 
corner  towards  the  Little  Turnstile.  And  when  the  chil- 
dren came  soon  after  four  o'clock,  they,  too,  ran  straight 
to  the  centre  of  the  garden  and  played  there  among  the 
seats  under  the  trees.  It  struck  me  that  they  were  like 
bubbles  drawn  to  the  centre  of  a  little  whirlpool. 

Twelve  years  later  I,  too,  was  drawn  into  that  idle  nucleus 
one  morning,  and  realised  the  attraction  of  the  still  centre 
where  one  can  sit  and  watch  the  happy  employed  go  eagerly 
by  in  the  delight  of  their  steady  occupation.  .  .  . 

I  saw  only  one  more  member  of  the  office  staff  that  day. 
He  was  a  youngster  of  nineteen,  or  so,  with  brown,  restless 
eyes.  He  stood  at  the  door  for  a  moment,  remarked,  "Lord, 
you  swatters,"  and  then  vanished.  He  was  dressed  for  the 
street. 

Neither  Geddes  nor  Kemplay  took  the  least  notice  of  him, 
but  when  he  had  gone  Geddes  yawned  enormously,  and 
then,  turning  to  me,  said, 

"That's  our  riotous  pupil." 

I  smiled  my  acknowledgement  of  his  humorous  intention. 


44,  HOUSE-MATES 

"Perfect  young  ass,"  Geddes  added. 

"Is  he  ?"  I  said.     "What's  his  name  ?" 

"Budge,"  Geddes  replied. 

I  thought  it  was  a  joke,  but  the  pupil's  name  was,  indeed, 
Budge. 

"Of  course,  we  call  him  Toddy,"  Geddes  concluded,  "when 
we  call  him  at  all,  that  is.  There's  a  sort  of  place  to  wash 
in  downstairs.  Have  you  got  your  own  soap?" 

I  blushed  at  the  reminder  that  I  had  neglected  the  im- 
portant function  of  washing  before  I  went  out  to  lunch. 

"No !    I  didn't  know  ..."  I  stammered. 

"You  can  use  mine  this  evening.  Come  on,"  Geddes 
said.  "It's  half-past  five." 


in 

That  day  and  the  two  or  three  days  that  followed  are 
still  very  clear  in  my  memory.  They  were  differentiated  by 
their  strangeness  from  all  the  days  that  followed.  Every- 
thing was  new  and  remarkable  to  me,  and  all  my  impressions 
were  associated  in  some  way  with  that  Queen-post  truss  I 
was  copying.  I  have  never  had  to  design  a  roof  with  a 
Queen-post  principal;  I  don't  suppose  I  ever  shall  have  to 
— that  type  of  construction  gradually  disappeared  with  the 
use  of  rolled  steel  sections — but  whenever  I  happen  to 
see  the  stock  illustration  which  still  holds  an  important 
place  in  all  the  building-construction  books  I  have  a  vivid 
sense  of  my  first  reactions  to  those  unfamiliar  surround- 
ings. 

Sidney  Baxter  figures  very  definitely  in  those  memories. 
He  had  a  conscience  about  his  pupils.  Many  architects 
take  the  fee  from  their  articled  pupils  and  allow  them  to 
pick  up  the  detail  of  architecture  and  building-construction 
at  their  own  sweet  will,  while  they  are  serving  a  useful 
part  in  the  general  work  of  the  office.  But  Mr.  Baxter 
used  often  to  devote  a  whole  hour  a  day  to  my  instruc- 
tions; and  he  was  a  particularly  able  teacher.  He  would 


HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN          45 

come  up  in  the  morning  before  we  had  begun  to  smoke  and 
stand  over  my  board,  and  explain  to  me  the  reason  for 
the  thing  I  happened  to  be  drawing.  I  believe  I  was  an 
unusually  apt  pupil — he  more  than  once  assured  me  that  I 
was — but  judging  from  the  incompetence  of  the  ordinary 
architect's  assistant,  I  feel  inclined  to  congratulate  myself 
on  having  had  Baxter  for  a  master.  He  made  one  under- 
stand. Geddes  has  said  the  same  thing. 

I  was  eleven  years  in  that  office  in  Lincoln's  Inn,  and 
while  I  often  regret  that  I  wasted,  in  one  sense,  such  a 
great  slice  of  my  life,  I  certainly  learnt  my  profession  there 
as  thoroughly  as  it  was  possible  for  me  to  learn  it  any- 
where. 

Poor  old  Baxter !  I  met  him  in  the  "tube"  two  or  three 
years  ago,  and  wanted  to  thank  him  for  all  he  did  for  me. 
But  he  had  nearly  lost  his  hearing,  and  was  more  nervous 
than  ever.  He  did  not  recognise  me  at  first — his  eyesight 
is  failing,  too — and  then  he  called  me  "young  man"  in  his 
old  manner  and  asked  me  how  I  was  getting  on.  I  tried  to 
tell  him,  but  the  horrible  clatter  of  the  tube  was  too  much 
for  us,  and  as  I  shouted  he  evidently  grew  more  and  more 
shy,  looking  round  at  the  other  passengers  as  if  he  knew 
that  they  must  be  gathering  more  from  my  narrative  than 
he  was  himself.  I  did  wind  up,  in  desperation,  by  shout- 
ing something  about  "all  due  to  you,  sir,"  but  I  know  he 
failed  to  get  the  gist  of  that.  I  believe  he  got  out  a  station 
or  two  before  his  destination  in  order  to  save  me  from 
further  embarrassment.  That  is  my  explanation  of  the 
fact  that  he  left  me  at  so  unlikely  a  stopping  place  as 
Mornington  Crescent.  He  looked,  I  thought,  very  little 
older — the  blue  had  faded  from  his  beard,  and  even  his 
eyebrows  had  become  white,  but  he  was  still  wearing  the 
same  steel-rimmed  spectacles,  the  solid  gold  watch  chain 
with  the  Freemasons'  pendant,  the  same  shade  of  fawn 
in  his  spats;  and  his  rather  shabby  top  hat  was  rammed 
on  the  back  of  his  head  at  the  familiar  angle;  he  often 
wore  it  in  the  office — he  forgot  to  take  it  off,  I  suppose. 

Heaton  was  a  very  different  type,  a  withered  little  clean- 


46  HOUSE-MATES 

shaven  man,  as  precise  in  his  professional  methods  as  he 
was  in  his  dress.  He  represented  the  practical  side  of 
the  firm,  and  had  a  fine  head  for  a  plan  and  for  economy 
in  construction.  Baxter  had  the  genius.  All  our  eleva- 
tions, and  we  did  many  things  besides  ecclesiastical  work, 
bear  the  stamp  of  his  personality.  I  was  looking  a  little 
while  ago  at  the  front  of  the  Pennyfather  offices  on  the 
Embankment,  and  thinking  what  Baxter  would  have  made 
of  London  if  he  could  have  had  a  hand  in  all  the  new  build- 
ing that  is  going  up.  There  is  a  kind  of  "gentleness"  about 
his  elevations.  I  know  no  other  word  for  it. 

And  yet  I  cannot  say  that  he  markedly  influenced  the 
style  of  the  three  men  from  his  office  who  have  since  made 
some  kind  of  a  mark  in  private  practice.  Geddes,  Horton- 
Smith  (who  came  after  I  had  been  in  Lincoln's  Inn  for 
two  years)  and  myself  were  very  much  affected  by  Voysey's 
work.  We  admired  it  from  the  outset,  and  allowed  our- 
selves to  be  carried  away  by  our  enthusiasm  for  the  "New 
Art"  style  in  building  and  decoration  that  ran  a  little  to 
seed  just  at  the  beginning  of  the  present  century.  Geddes 
had  never  quite  recovered  in  my  opinion.  He  still  carries 
the  "simplicity"  idea  altogether  too  far.  Heaton  used  to 
laugh  at  us.  "Any  more  toasting  forks?"  was  his  stock 
joke,  referring  to  the  conventional  design  that  was  almost 
the  only  decoration  used  in  the  style  at  that  period.  "Those 
infernal  squiggles  of  yours,"  was  a  less  placid  criticism  of 
his  that  used  to  annoy  Geddes. 

But  Geddes  was  a  man  with  one  idea.  He  deserved  to 
succeed  in  his  own  line.  He  lived  for  architecture.  The 
contemplation  of  it  absorbed  him.  When  one  saw  him 
lost  in  those  fits  of  abstraction  that  were  so  characteristic 
of  him— fits  that  took  the  form  of  stopping  in  the  street 
to  wrestle  mentally  with  some  problem  of  building  construc- 
tion, or,  as  I  first  saw  him,  of  assisting  his  calculations  by 
counting  the  stairs  up  to  our  office— it  was  always  certain 
that  architecture  in  some  shape  was  engrossing  his  whole 
attention.  He  would  stop  in  the  middle  of  a  game  of 
dominoes  to  sketch  a  "toasting-fork"  on  the  marble  top 


HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN         47 

of  the  table;  and  I  will  swear  that  when  he  lost  his  place 
in  the  marriage  service  it  was  not  due  to  nervousness  conse- 
quent upon  the  leading  part  he  was  playing  in  the  cere- 
mony, but  to  some  sudden  inspiration  that  had  come  to 
him  in  connexion  with  his  work.  During  the  time  he  was 
at  Heaton  &  Baxter's  he  went  in  for  no  fewer  than  twenty- 
three  competitions  (I  collaborated  with  him  "in  eleven),  and 
he  never  received  the  encouragement  of  so  much  as  a  third 
premium;  and  any  one  who  knows  the  enormous  labour 
entailed  in  getting  out  a  set  of  competition  drawings  in  one's 
own  time,  after  working  in  an  office  for  eight  hours  a 
day,  will  appreciate  Geddes'  devotion  and  singleness  of 
purpose. 

The  only  time  I  ever  saw  him  depressed  was  when  young 
Horton-Smith  walked  off  with  the  Birmingham  job — his 
third  essay  in  competition  work.  "There  must  be  a  rotten 
lot  of  luck  in  these  bally  things,"  Geddes  confided  to  me 
on  that  occasion ;  a  remark  that  did  not  do  justice  to  Horton- 
Smith's  peculiar  cleverness.  He  has  proved  since  that  he 
has  the  knack  of  pleasing  competition  assessors;  a  difficult 
knack  that  has  nothing  to  do  with  luck.  I  think  Geddes 
was  too  conscientious  and  perhaps  too  original  to  win  an 
open  competition. 

The  only  other  man  in  the  office  who  had  any  sort  of 
influence  upon  me  during  those  eleven  years  was  Kemplay ; 
and  he  was  one  of  those  mediocre  people  who  defy  descrip- 
tion. He  was  married,  had  two  children,  and  earned  £5 
a  week  with  no  hope  of  ever  getting  more  unless  he  had 
young  Horton-Smith's  "luck."  But  Kemplay  gave  up  go- 
ing in  for  competitions  five  years  or  more  before  I  left 
the  office.  Fortunately  for  him,  he  had  a  very  equable 
temperament  and  his  marriage  was  a  happy  one.  To  me  he 
looks  much  the  same,  now,  as  he  did  when  I  first  saw  him 
in  1894,  the  only  striking  difference  being  the  vividly  white 
streaks  in  his  black  hair.  His  hair  was  very  coarse — I  think 
he  must  have  had  a  strain  of  black  blood  in  him,  some- 
where— and  the  first  white  strand  that  came  showed  up  like 
a  false  thread  in  some  stiff,  dark  material.  That  harbinger 


48  HOUSE-MATES 

disappeared  after  a  couple  of  days — his  wife  had  pulled  it 
out,  he  told  us. 

Young  Budge  enlisted  in  the  Yeomanry  at  the  beginning 
of  the  South  African  war,  and  died  of  enteric  in  the  spring 
of  1900.  .  .  . 

Mine  was  a  very  uneventful  life  during  those  eleven 
years,  and  in  a  sense  I,  too,  was  little  older  at  the  end  of 
the  time.  I  gained  much  technical  knowledge,  but  scarcely 
any  knowledge  of  the  world.  The  routine  of  the  office  and 
the  restraint  of  my  home  life  shut  me  into  a  cloister.  There 
were  moments  when  I  vaguely  resented  my  confinement, 
and  I  plunged  into  one  desperate  adventure  that  would 
have  greatly  shocked  my  mother  if  she  had  ever  guessed 
my  defiance  of  her  precious  belief  in  the  steadily  respectable 
piety  of  such  young  men  as  myself  and  my  colleagues  in  the 
office.  But  for  the  most  part  I  was  tame  and  compliant.  I 
liked  my  profession;  I  was  presently  earning  two,  and 
later  three  pounds  a  week;  and  I  always  had  before  me  the 
hope  of  one  day  setting  up  for  myself  in  private  practice. 
I  passed  my  final  examination  at  the  Royal  Institute  when 
I  was  twenty-five,  and  thereafter  had  the  right  to  the  use 
of  the  letters  A.R.I.B.A.  after  my  name,  and  an  authority 
for  protesting  against  the  state  neglect  of  architecture  as 
a  profession.  If  no  architect  were  allowed  to  practise 
until  he  had  passed  a  qualifying  examination,  and  was  there- 
after liable  to  lose  his  diploma  for  any  flagrant  breach  of 
the  London  or  provincial  building  regulations,  the  various 
acts  that  have  been  passed  might  really  protect  the  public 
from  the  enormities  of  the  jerry-builder. 

I  realise,  now,  that  what  I  missed  in  those  Lincoln  Inn 
days  was  some  near  friend.  I  was  intimate  enough  with 
Kemplay  and  Geddes,  but  neither  of  them  was  capable  of 
responding  to  something  in  me  that  was  urgently  calling 
for  expression.  Geddes  was  a  puritan  in  sexual  matters. 
I  remember  young  Budge  coming  into  our  room  one  after- 
noon when  I  had  been  at  the  office  a  few  months,  and  telling 
us  a  story  that  was  really  funny,  even  if  it  was  not  fit  for 
publication.  Kemplay  laughed,  with  perhaps  a  touch  of 


HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN          49 

self-consciousness;  I  giggled  and  blushed;  but  Geddes  told 
Budge  not  to  be  "a  dirty  little  beast."  Budge  lost  his  temper 
and  told  Geddes  that  he  was  a  "rotten  prig,"  but  Geddes 
was  perfectly  cool — he  had  a  most  annoying  way  of  keep- 
ing his  temper — and  from  his  sure  and  comfortable  plat- 
form of  conscious  righteousness  he  was  able  to  maintain 
a  lofty  attitude  which  there  was  no  assailing.  "Clean"  was 
the  word  he  insisted  on,  and  poor  young  Budge  getting 
/redder  and  more  furious  every  moment  had  no  better  an- 
swer than  to  swing  out  of  the  room  and  slam  the  door. 

That  incident  had  a  strong  effect  upon  me  at  the  time.  I 
was  young,  impressionable  and  innocent ;  I  had  been  brought 
up  at  home  in  an  evangelical  atmosphere,  and  had  naturally 
found  my  friends  at  Oakstone  among  boys  of  more  or 
less  the  same  temper ;  also,  during  those  first  years  in  Lon- 
don, I  was  always  under  the  restraint  of  my  mother's  influ- 
ence ;  and,  finally,  I  looked  up  to  Geddes  with  his  technical 
knowledge  and  his  smart  clothes  as  to  a  very  superior  crea- 
ture. I  attribute  much  of  the  gaucherie  and  shyness  of 
my  youth  to  the  habit  I  acquired  in  those  early  years  of 
peering  at  sex  with  a  blush  and  a  sense  of  shame. 

A  friend  of  the  right  kind  might  have  helped  me,  but 
as  luck  would  have  it,  no  friend  came  my  way  until  I  had 
left  Lincoln's  Inn. 

rv 

I  was  twenty-three  when  I  met  Nellie  Roberts. 

My  mother,  my  uncle  and  his  wife,  the  little  circle  of 
our  rather  elderly  acquaintances  at  Hampstead,  even  the 
obsessed  Geddes,  would  certainly  have  regarded  that  inter- 
lude as  shameful,  but  I  feel  no  kind  of  shame  or  regret, 
now,  when  I  think  of  it;  although  the  strong  religious  re- 
action which  finally  terminated  my  relations  with  Nellie 
brought  with  it  a  conviction  of  sin,  and  a  quite  definite 
feeling  of  remorse. 

I  have  had  little  experience  of  the  ways  of  London's 
underworld,  or  of  the  women  who  frequent  it  (unl'ess  I 


50  HOUSE-MATES 

can  count  my  later  observations  of  the  unfortunate  Rose 
Whiting  as  experience),  and  I  cannot  say  whether  Nellie 
Roberts  was  a  rare  exception  from  her  kind.  She  was 
not  in  the  least  like  the  women  I  have  seen  at  night  in  the 
streets  off  Piccadilly  Circus,  nor  those  more  successful 
courtesans  I  have  observed  in  the  promenades  of  various 
music-halls.  But  she  may  represent  a  select  class,  and  I 
can  only  regard  myself  as  being  unusually  fortunate  to  have 
met  so  simple  a  representative  of  it. 

I  met  her  one  Saturday  afternoon  in  August,  1900,  near 
the  bandstand  in  Hyde  Park.  I  was  far  too  shy  to  be  a 
woman-hunter  even  if  I  had  dared  the  thought  of  such  a 
feral  pursuit;  and  it  was  the  merest  accident  that  I  hap- 
pened to  sit  down  so  near  her.  Only  one  empty  chair  sep- 
arated us. 

The  initiative  was  hers,  of  course ;  but  she  was  not  hunt- 
ing any  more  than  I  was.  She  was  there  for  pleasure,  sim- 
ply, even  dowdily,  dressed,  and  with  no  "make-up"  on  her 
face.  And  when  she  turned  and  made  some  remark  to 
me  about  the  fineness  of  the  afternoon,  she  had  no  ulterior 
purpose  in  her  mind.  My  bashfulness  and  embarrassment 
appealed  to  her,  at  that  moment;  she  wanted  some  one  to 
talk  to,  and  she  saw,  I  suppose,  that  I  was  very  unlike 
the  sort  of  young  man  with  whom  she  was  all  too  familiar. 

When  I  had  partly  overcome  my  first  shyness,  I  en- 
joyed her  company.  She  had  an  inquisitive,  critical  mind 
and  her  comments  on  the  passers-by  amused  me.  She  was 
the  entertainer;  I  had  nothing  to  do  but  express  my  ap- 
preciation of  her  wit. 

And  she  would  have  left  me  without  making  any  further 
advances  if  I  had  not  summoned  up  my  courage  to  ask 
her  whether  she  often  came  to  Hyde  Park  on  fine  Satur- 
day afternoons.  She  looked  at  me  suspiciously  for  a  mo- 
ment, but  my  ingenuousness  was  too  patent  for  doubt,  and 
she  smiled  with  the  first  hint  she  had  given  of  approaching 
a  flirtation,  as  she  said  she  would  meet  me  there  again  the 
following  Saturday. 

I  suppose  I  imagined  myself  to  be  in  love  with  her  dur- 


HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN          51 

ing  the  week  that  elapsed  before  I  saw  her  again.  I  thought 
of  her  constantly  with  a  vivid  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
I  hoped  to  continue  the  acquaintance,  and  I  was  perfectly 
aware  that  the  meeting  would  be  considered  improper  from 
the  Hampstead  point  of  view,  an  impropriety  that  had  a 
peculiar  attraction  from  some  tendency  which  stirred  within 
me  at  that  time.  I  was  in  the  unfulfilled  condition  of  a 
young  man  who  has  no  outlet,  and  my  yearning  took  the 
form  of  a  desire  for  the  society  of  young  women — my 
cousin  Gladys  was  in  Brussels  then.  In  such  a  condition 
a  man  may  imagine  himself  in  love  with  his  aunt,  and 
Nellie  Roberts  was  about  my  own  af2,  and  pretty  in  her 
simple,  pert  way.  No  doubt,  I  belie  ed  myself  to  be  in 
love  with  her. 

Our  second  meeting  put  the  affair  on  quite  another  foot- 
ing. The  afternoon  was  dull  and  threatened  rain,  and  we 
presently  took  a  bus  up  to  Piccadilly  and  had  tea  together 
in  a  restaurant  in  Panton  Street  to  which  Nellie  introduced 
me. 

We  were  on  the  verge  of  parting  before  she  sprang  her 
surprise  on  me;  I  had  paid  the  bill  and  was  reaching  up 
for  my  hat,  an  action  that  from  some  obscure  reason  gave 
me  the  courage  to  proffer  my  prepared  question:  "Shall  I 
see  you  again,  next  Saturday?" 

Her  face  set  in  a  .sudden  expression  of  resolution.  "I 
suppose  you  know  what  /  am,"  she  said. 

But  I  had  had  no  intuitions. 

"Do  you  mean  ...  ?"  I  began  timidly.  I  was  still  stand- 
ing wedged  between  the  table  and  the  plush-covered  seat, 
and  supporting  myself  with  one  hand  against  the  wall.  I 
believe  my  first  guess  was  that  she  was  married,  and  I 
looked  down,  now,  for  the  first  time  to  see  if  she  were 
wearing  a  wedding-ring. 

"Oh !  sit  down,"  she  said,  with  a  touch  of  petulance,  and 
then,  "You  surely  don't  mean  to  tell  me  that  you're  as, 
innocent  as  all  that." 

My  expression  of  bewilderment  must  have  convinced  her ; 
she  pursed  her  mouth  and  seemed  to  hesitate  as  to  whether 


52  HOUSE-MATES 

she  would  not,  after  all,  keep  me — a  single  entry  perhaps— 
on  her  list  of  innocent  men  friends.  She  had  had  all  my 
history  that  afternoon.  She  had  prompted  me  with  ques- 
tions and  had  appeared  to  take  a  deep  interest  in  my  willing 
replies.  I  was  less  ready  than  ever  to  lose  her  society  after 
that  second  meeting. 

"Well,  I  suppose  you  know  what  .  .  ."  She  started, 
broke  off  with  a  shrug  of  her  shoulders  and  said,  "Didn't 
you  guess  I  was  a  light  woman?" 

Even  then  I  was  still  puzzled  for  a  moment. 

"Do  you  mean  ..."  I  began  again. 

"Well,  you  didn't  think  I  was  a  lady  of  fortune,  did 
you?"  she  asked.  ]  believe  the  temper  in  her  voice  was 
assumed  to  cover  hei  awn  confusion. 

I  understood,  then — not  fully,  because  my  mind  had  been 
filled  with  stories  of  the  bold  adventuress  who  enticed  such 
as  I  was  to  strange,  secret  places  for  robbery  and  murder. 
But  my  most  urgent  desire  at  the  moment  was  to  say  the 
"right  thing,"  whatever  that  might  be. 

"I  don't  know,"  I  stammered — I  saw  I  must  say  some- 
thing—"I  thought  perhaps  .  .  .  you  don't  look  the  least 
like  .  .  ." 

She  was  brutal.    "I  don't' look  like  what?"  she  insisted. 

"I  thought  perhaps  you  were  in  a  shop  or  something,"  I 
said. 

I  used  to  be  a  hospital  nurse,"  she  returned.  "I've  got 
a  photograph  of  myself  in  uniform  at  home." 

I  did  not  understand  her  indignant  claim  to  a  social  posi- 
tion above  the  shop-girl  class,  but  I  jumped  at  the  oppor- 
tunity to  get  to  what  seemed  a  safer  topic.  Her  show  of 
temper  made  me  horribly  uncomfortable. 

"Why  did  you  give  it  up?"  I  asked  humbly. 

"The  usual  thing,"  she  said. 

I  said  "Oh!"  as  if  I  understood,  but  she  saw  through 
my  pretence. 

"He  was  a  medical  student,"  she  explained.    "We're  go- 
)  be  married  as  soon  as  he  can  make  a  living." 


HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN          53 

I  was  hopelessly  at  sea  again.  I  believed  her  statements 
which  were  indeed  true — even  the  last  one,  incredible  as  it 
may  seem.  And  I  could  not  reconcile  them  with  the  general 
vague  conception  I  had  formed  of  the  "bad  women"  against 
whom  my  mother  had  once  or  twice  nervously  warned  me. 

"He  wouldn't  like  it  much,"  I  tried,  "if  he  knew  that 
you  were  having  tea  with  me,  would  he  ?" 

"Well,  I've  got  to  live,  I  suppose,"  she  snapped. 

It  was  impossible  for  me  to  understand  all  the  complex 
motives  and  feelings  that  were  disturbing  her.  Even  now 
I  can  only  guess  dimly  how  she  was  influenced  by  a  kindly 
feeling  for  myself,  by  a  longing  to  retain  some  vestige  of 
social  dignity ;  and  by  the  urgent  money  troubles  that  were 
harassing  her  that  August.  I  judged  her  attitude,  so  far 
as  I  judged  it  at  all,  from  certain  general  premises — partly 
gathered  from  romantic  fiction — I  was  incapable  of  allow- 
ing for  the  fact  that  she  had  twenty-five  years  of  individual 
life  behind  her,  and  that  her  character,  training  and  ex- 
perience were  all  finding  expression  in  that  scene  with 
me  at  the  restaurant.  My  one  source  of  concern,  just 
then,  was  to  regain  the  pleasant  terms  of  our  former  inter- 
course. 

"Of  course.    Rather,"  was  the  form  my  conciliation  took. 

"You  don't  suppose  I  like  it  any  more  than  he  does?" 
she  said  sharply.  And  through  the  density  of  my  ignorance 
some  appreciation  of  the  true  state  of  the  ca.se  began  slowly 
to  filter.  Fortunately  I  was  inspired,  at  last,  to  a  happier 
response. 

"You  see,  I'm  so  fearfully  innocent  about  things,"  I  said. 
"I've  never  met  any  one  before  who  could  explain  about 
them  to  me." 

She  smiled.  "Innocent !"  she  said.  "Yes,  you  are  that,  I 
must  say." 

"Well,  when  shall  I  see  you  again?"  I  asked  cheerfully. 

"Afraid  to  go  out  in  the  evenings,  I  suppose  ?"  she  asked. 

I  admitted  that  I  was.  My  mother  would  accept  an  ex- 
cuse for  my  absence  on  Saturday  afternoon,  without  mak- 
ing detailed  enquiry,  but  an  evening  out  would  necessitate 


54  HOUSE-MATES 

some  elaborate  lie  that  I  was  not,  then,  prepared  to  fabri- 
cate. 

"Well,  next  Saturday?"  she  suggested.  "You  can  come 
to  my  rooms."  She  looked  at  me  searchingly  as  she  said 
that.  "You're  sure  you  want  to  come?"  she  added;  and  I 
am  not  certain  that  my  ready  assent  altogether  pleased 
her. 

She  gave  me  a  card  with  an  address  in  Paddington.  .  .  . 

She  changed  her  shape  for  me  during  the  week  that  fol- 
lowed. I  no  longer  imagined  myself  in  love  with  her — she 
was  not,  for  some  physiological  reason,  the  type  that  at- 
tracted me — she  gradually  assumed  the  shape  of  Louisa, 
the  housemaid,  and  this  time  there  was  no  vision  of  a 
glorious  Adela  to  divert  me. 

And  I  want  to  confess  that  I  was  not  ashamed  when  I 
returned  to  Hampstead  the  next  Saturday  evening.  My 
chief  feeling  was  one  of  release.  I  did  not  blush  when 
I  greeted  my  mother;  on  the  contrary,  I  was  aware  of  a 
new  strength  and  confidence.  I  felt  that  I  had  somehow 
vindicated  myself. 


I  met  Nellie  many  times  in  the  course  of  the  next  two 
years.  She  was  my  one  experience  in  this  kind,  and  I 
came  to  have  a  very  friendly,  companionable  feeling  for 
her. 

She  was  a  simple  creature,  and  our  only  quarrels  were 
provoked  by  her  mention  of  the  medical  student  who  had 
promised  eventually  to  marry  her.  She  saw  him  every 
Sunday,  and  it  irked  me  that  she  should  put  him  in  a  class 
by  himself,  a  class  from  which  I  was  inevitably  excluded. 
After  one  such  quarrel  I  did  not  see  her  for  nearly  five 
months.  The  man,  himself,  must  forever  remain  a  mystery 
to  me.  I  never  met  him— Nellie  never  suggested  that  I 
should  do  that— but  I  have  seen  his  photograph,  and  re- 
member it  still  so  well  that  I  believe  I  should  recognise 
him  if  I  saw  him  in  the  street.  He  had  a  heavy,  rather 


65 

stupid  face,  but  he  looked  honest.  Nellie  insisted  that  he 
was  well  connected.  I  should  like  to  know  whether  he  ever 
married  her.  .  .  . 

And  not  for  eighteen  months  did  my  conscience  begin 
to  reproach  me.  My  cousin  Gladys's  return  from  Brussels 
was  the  chief  cause  of  that  change  of  attitude.  Triad  lost 
the  habit  of  going  to  Ken  Lodge  after  our  first  year  or  two 
in  Hampstead,  and  I  had  seen  very  little  of  Gladys  since 
she  was  eighteen. 

I  remember  going  to  dinner  with  my  uncle  and  aunt,  soon 
after  she  returned,  and  finding  that  our  alternations  of 
superiority  had  settled  down  into  son-othing  approaching 
equality.  We  began  to  talk  about  Poelaert's  Law  Courts 
at  Brussels,  a  building  that  had  already  won  my  enthusiasm 
from  sketches  and  photographs.  She  discussed  it  very  in- 
telligently, and  was  evidently  delighted  to  find  that  I  was 
eager  to  listen  and  approve  without  attempting  to  contrast 
some  English  example.  Her  three  years  at  the  finishing 
school  had  given  her  a  proprietary  interest  in  Brussels  and 
so  far  I  was  the  only  person  she  had  met  since  her  re- 
turn who  had  been  willing  to  admire  her  authority. 

And  after  dinner,  when  Gladys  was  singing  to  us  in  the 
drawing-room,  I  remembered  Nellie  with  a  sudden  horrible 
consciousness  of  the  sordidness  of  that  intrigue.  Nellie's 
rooms,  her  accent,  even  her  simple,  honest  self  seemed  so 
impossible  when  considered  in  my  present  surroundings.  I 
had  an  unpleasant  sense  of  not  being  fit  company  for  my 
own  relations. 

I  only  saw  Nellie  twice  more  after  that;  and  the  second 
time  definitely  closed  our  intercourse. 

I  had  grown  bolder  and  less  honest,  then.  I  used  to 
tell  my  mother  that  I  spent  the  evening  with  Horton- Smith 
who,  conveniently  for  me,  had  rooms  not  very  far  from 
Nellie's. 

I  left  her  about  eleven  o'clock  that  night,  with  no  premoni- 
tion that  we  should  never  meet  again.  Indeed,  I  was  in  a 
boastful  mood;  inclined  to  regard  Hampstead  society  as 
I  knew  it,  with  contempt ;  and  it  was  mere  pride  that  made 


56  HOUSE-MATES 

me  go  on  to  the  rooms  of'  Horton- Smith  on  the  chance  of 
finding  him  still  up,  in  preference  to  making  my  way  home 
by  the  Metropolitan  to  Gower  Street,  where  I  could  catch 
the  yellow  "Camden  Town"  bus  up  to  the  lower  Heath.  I 
knew  that  I  risked  missing  the  last  bus,  but  I  wanted  to 
miss  it.  I  felt  equal  to  any  adventure;  any  challenge  to 
respectability. 

And  Horton-Smith  was  up  and  had  two  other  men  with 
him,  one  of  whom  I  had  met  there  before,  a  quiet  chap 
from  an  architect's  office  in  Moorgate  Street.  They  greeted 
me  with  enthusiasm  and  insisted  upon  playing  solo-whist. 
They  had  been  playing  the  three-handed  game  before  I 
arrived,  and  were  rather  sick  of  it.  I  was  quite  willing 
and  we  kept  it  up  till  past  three  in  the  morning,  by  which 
time  only  the  quiet  man  and  myself  were  capable  of  dis- 
tinguishing the  cards.  Horton-Smith  and  the  stranger  were 
hopelessly  drunk.  I  take  no  credit  for  my  own  sobriety. 
I  have  never  been  able  to  drink  more  than  one  glass  of 
whiskey  in  an  evening;  the  smell  of  the  second  always 
produces  a  horrible  feeling  of  nausea. 

The  quiet  man  and  I  left  the  house  together,  but  he  lived 
at  Notting  Hill  and  we  parted  on  Horton-Smith's  door- 
step. 

I  was  still  very  elated  when  I  came  out  into  the  stillness 
of  the  July  night— all  sense  of  sleepiness  had  left  me  about 
one  o'clock.  I  had  been  chaffed  by  Horton-Smith  and  his 
friends  upon  arriving  so  late  in  the  evening.  They  had  put 
but  one  construction  on  my  employment  of  the  time  before 
I  joined  them,  and  although  I  had  given  them  no  confidences, 
I  had  not  denied  the  truth  of  the  charges  they  brought 
against  me.  I  had  been,  I  thought,  a  man  of  the  world.  I 
was  pleased  with  the  part  I  had  played. 

And,  now,  I  wanted  to  enjoy  the  sense  of  my  own  com- 
pleteness and  well-being.  I  did  not  feel  the  need  for  any 
companion;  I  was  in  a  mood  to  enjoy  my  own  company 
and  the  realisation  of  my  own  powers  of  sensibility  and 
vision. 

London  seemed  wonderfully  opened  to  me  during  that 


HAMPSTEAD  AND  LINCOLN'S  INN          57 

long  walk.  As  I  went  down  Bishop's  Road  and  over  the 
railway  bridge,  there  was  a  lift  in  the  sky  towards  the  north- 
west, and  the  weak  reflection  of  daylight  was  creeping  in 
to  mingle  with  the  clicking  violet  light  of  the  arc-lamps  in 
the  sidings.  The  night  was  hardly  disturbed  by  the  jolt 
and  clankings  of  trucks,  and  by  the  occasional  sound  of 
men's  voices,  hoarse  and  distant,  shouting  unintelligible  in- 
structions in  the  darkness  of  an  abyss  that  ran  into  the 
mouth  of  the  station. 

But  when  I  had  come  down  the  Harrow  Road,  and 
through  Chapel  Street,  I  found  another  impression  that 
was  better  suited  to  my  mood.  The  light  ahead  of  me  was 
steadily  growing  so  that  now  the  hard  silhouettes  of  roofs 
and  distorted  chimneys  stood  up  against  the  sky.  Every- 
thing here  was  very  still.  The  town  was  asleep;  and  it 
pleased  me  to  find  in  it  a  vision  of  some  place  that  was  not 
London. 

I  walked  in  an  older  city,  exploring  unknown  mysteries. 
Every  side  turning  was  an  avenue  that  led  to  some  deep 
wonder.  ...  I  was  a  spirit  alone  and  undaunted,  come  to 
a  place  that  existed  only  for  me;  that  was  mine  to  hold 
and  presently  to  change  at  will.  All  the  potentialities  of  it 
were  there,  but  my  strength  was  sufficient  to  mould  them 
as  I  would.  I  could  be  at  once  the  explorer  and  the  master. 
.  .  .  The  place  was  crying  to  me  for  release  from  its  own 
ugliness.  Within  it  was  a  fugitive  soul  that  knew  its  own 
distortion  of  form,  and  sought  my  strength  to  lift  the 
pressure  that  had  forced  it  into  so  gloomy  a  shape.  ...  I 
floated  in  a  calm  serenity  of  power.  I  was  no  more  aware 
of  myself  as  an  individual  presence.  My  spirit  was  enter- 
ing into  the  body  of  London,  and  every  brick  and  stone 
of  her  was  becoming  a  cell  that  would  presently  reflect  the 
brightness  of  my  desire  for  beauty.  ...  I  knew  that  all 
cities  were  the  expression  of  men's  thought,  but  whereas 
my  own  thought  was  clear  and  lucid,  able  to  conceive  grace 
and  delicacy  of  form;  this  new  body  into  which  I  had  so 
lately  come  was  the  outcome  of  greed  and  antagonisms ;  of 
jealousy  and  mean  ambitions;  of  clumsy,  turgid  thoughts 


58  HOUSE-MATES 

that  had  no  sureness  of  direction.  ...  I  was  filled  with  a 
delicious  sadness  of  regret  for  all  the  desires  of  men  who 
had  lived  and  died  and  found  no  steadiness  of  expres- 
sion. .  .  . 

I  came  back  to  the  body  of  Wilfred  Hornby,  pacing  with 
sedate  regularity  along  the  Marylebone  Road,  a  little  to  the 
west  of  Park  Crescent ;  and  the  picture  I  saw  with  his  eyes 
at  that  moment  was  endowed  with  the  ecstasy  of  my  recent 
vision.  The  invisible  sun  had  brightened  the  east  to  a  hard 
steel  grey,  and  before  me  the  asphalt  shone  like  silver,  steam- 
ing wet  from  the  foaming  whiteness  of  a  great  jet  of 
water  that  lifted  in  a  splendid  curve  from  the  nozzle  of 
a  black  serpentine  hose.  And  the  dark  figures  of  the  men 
who  moved  deliberately  here  and  there  were  rimmed  with 
the  brightness  of  the  morning  that  shone  round  them  and 
flung  splashes  of  light  from  every  brimming  crease  of 
their  spray-soaked  oilskins. 

I  stood  quite  still.  I  wanted  to  throw  up  my  arms  and 
hail  the  coming  of  day  with  a  great  shout.  .  .  . 

But  afterwards  my  mood  slowly  declined  and  when  I 
stood  on  the  summit  of  Hampstead  Heath  and  looked  down 
over  the  blue  clearness  of  London,  blown  clean  of  smoke, 
and  sparkling  here  and  there  under  the  vivid  newness  of 
the  sun,  I  saw  it  as  one  who  stands  to  watch  the  glint  of 
a  sail  nearly  lost  on  the  horizon.  I  wa,s  separated,  a  man 
in  the  toils  of  endeavour.  I  had  no  supreme  power;  no 
insight. 

And  then  my  eye  caught  the  white  spire  of  Highgate 
Church,  and  all  my  mood  of  the  night  shrank  into  a  sudden 
resolution. 


MY  religious  fit  lasted  for  about  six  weeks,  counting  from 
its  very  definite  and  sudden  access  to  the  last  fitful 
effort,  the  final  desperate  convulsive  clinging  to  the  skirts 
of  a  mood  I  could  not  recapture  by  a  deliberate  effort  of 
will. 

I  call  it  a  mood  now ;  but  the  name  I  had  for  it  at  that 
time  was  "the  Holy  Spirit."  I  believed  that  I  had  been 
"called,"  that  some  great  destiny  of  martyrdom  was  before 
me.  I  read  the  lives  of  the  mystics,  and  was  greatly  com- 
forted to  find  that  some  of  them,  like  myself,  had  been 
profligates  and  sinners  before  their  conversion.  The  one 
real  doubt  that  had  beset  me  in  the  first  days  of  my  inspira- 
tion was  whether  so  great  a  sinner  as  I  had  been  could  be 
found  worthy  of  saintship.  Nevertheless,  I  believe  that 
the  thought  of  my  justification  marked  the  first  decline  of 
my  endeavour.  Perhaps  I  was  too  greatly  comforted  by 
the  recognition  of  my  own  worthiness. 

Yet,  from  the  beginning,  my  emotions  were  curiously 
mixed.  On  the  one  hand  I  was  filled  with  a  fury  of  self- 
abasement.  I  humiliated  myself.  I  sought  methods  of 
discipline,  searching  out  my  secret  sins  and  being  particu- 
larly severe  with  any  tendencies  towards  selfishness  and 
hypocrisy.  I  even  went  so  far  as  seriously  to  consider  the 
necessity  of  taking  orders — as  a  penance ;  for  through  all 
that  mood  I  persisted  in  my  distaste  for  the  orthodox  profes- 
sion of  religion.  On  the  other  hand,  I  was  secretly  elated, 

59 


60  HOUSE-MATES 

full  of  a  sense  of  power  and  holiness,  proud  of  the  dis- 
tinction that  had  been  conferred  on  me. 

And  those  two  violently  opposed  attitudes  subsisted  quite 
equably  side  by  side,  reacting  upon  and  stimulating  each 
other ;  so  that  even  as  I  abased  myself  and  considered  such 
forms  of  discipline  as  ordination,  I  sat  in  pleased  approval 
of  my  own  humility. 

The  declination  of  my  spiritual  rapture  was  so  gradual, 
that  only  in  retrospect  can  I  mark  the  stages  of  my  rever- 
sion to  the  normal.  But  when  I,  now,  consider  myself  in 
relation  to  some  memory-stimulating  incident  of  that  period, 
I  can  clearly  discern  a  difference  in  intensity  between,  say, 
the  third  and  fifth  week  of  my  seizure.  By  the  third  week 
there  were  lapse.s  of  consciousness;  periods  gradually  ex- 
tending, during  which  I  forgot  alike  the  splendour  and  the 
irk  of  my  religious  intentions.  For,  curious  as  it  seems,  I 
did,  in  effect,  finally  forget  altogether.  I  remembered  with 
my  mind,  as  I  still  remember,  all  the  long  diminishing  phase 
of  my  rapture ;  but  this  intellectual  memory  no  longer  awoke 
my  spiritual  desires.  And  after  each  interval  of  spiritual 
forgetfulness,  the  response  to  the  ideal  of  sanctity  was  less 
spontaneous,  more  mental,  so  that  towards  the  end  I  had  to 
work  myself  up  into  a  state  of  devotion  by  an  effort  of 
will. 

I  think  the  last  such  effort  was  made  about  six  weeks 
after  my  first  vision. 

I  never  made  any  complete  confession  to  my  mother.  She 
guessed  something  of  what  was  in  my  mind,  and  began  her 
approach  to  the  winning  of  my  confidence  by  looking  at  me 
with  an  encouraging  hopeful  expression.  At  last,  after 
some  four  or  five  days  of  my  new  life,  she  found  courage  to 
put  her  question  into  words :  "Haven't  you  anything  to  tell 
me,  dear?"  she  asked,  and  went  on,  "I  have  noticed  a  change 
n  you,  lately."  She  evidently  hoped  to  pave  the  way  for 
me.  She  might  have  been  asking  me  if  I  were  in  love. 

I  made  no  evasion  on  the  score  of  misunderstanding  her 
question,  but  I  would  not  "open  my  heart"  to  her  as  she 
presently  suggested.  "Not  yet,"  was  the  encouragement  I 


GLADYS  61 

gave  her,  implying  that  her  guess  was  a  true  one  but  with- 
holding all  confidence.  I  was  influenced  by  several  mo- 
tives. In  the  first  place,  I  was  not  ready  then  to  share  my 
glory  with  any  one ;  I  was  afraid  of  diminishing  my  rapture 
by  trying  to  express  it  in  words ;  and  I  knew  that  my  mother 
would,  unconsciously,  lower  the  plane  of  my  emotion.  She 
would  have  seen  it  all  in  terms  of  a  "call"  to  take  orders, 
and  that,  to  me,  was  but  a  minor  phase  of  the  grand  inten- 
tion. But  beyond  that  sufficiently  powerful  motive  for 
silence,  I  was  aware  of  the  danger  of  hypocrisy.  I  was 
afraid  to  proclaim  my  selection,  lest  the  boa.st  should  con- 
demn me.  And,  again,  I  believe  that  I  recognised  in  some 
dim  way  the  danger  of  openly  making  any  pledge.  The 
taking  of  vows  reminded  me  too  nearly  of  my  bonfires  in 
the  vicarage  garden;  and  at  the  further  heights  of  my 
new  devotion  to  holiness  I  fervently  denied  the  least  rela- 
tion between  my  present  state  and  those  earlier  brief  con- 
versions. The  precedent  was  altogether  too  ominous. 

My  mother's  prayer  with  me  on  that  and  one  or  two 
subsequent  occasions  confirmed  me  in  my  resolution  to  tell 
her  nothing  until  I  was,  as  I  put  it,  "quite  sure  of  myself." 
Her  very  phrases  flattened  the  wonder  of  my  experience. 
"Grant  that  he  may  be  led  to  serve  Thee,"  was  the  dominant 
motive  of  her  request;  and  that  side  of  me  which  walked 
among  the  stars  was,  in  some  odd  way,  a  little  offended 
by  the  significance  of  that  prayer.  .  .  . 


ii 

All  that  exciting  ebullition  had  subsided  before  my  mother 
and  I  went  to  Eastbourne  for  our  summer  holiday.  We 
were  to  be  the  guests  of  my  uncle  and  aunt,  who  were 
already  installed  in  very  comfortable  furnished  apartments 
when  we  joined  them.  This  was  the  first  time  that  I  had 
spent  my  holiday  with  the  Williams ;  and  I  believe  the  plan 
was  the  beginning  of  an  unostentatious  campaign  to  encour- 
age a  greater  intimacy  between  myself  and  Gladys. 


62  HOUSE-MATES 

I  seemed  to  meet  her  for  the  first  time  that  September. 
Until  then  she  had  been  nothing  more  than  a  cousin,  some 
kind  of  impersonal  Relation,  an  appurtenance  that  I  had 
accepted  as  being  in  the  general  scheme  of  family  life.  In  as 
far  as  I  had  regarded  her  as  an  individual,  I  had,  before 
her  return  from  Brussels,  rather  disliked  her  than  other- 
wise. 

She  was  undoubtedly  very  pretty.  She  had  the  very  fair 
hair,  the  blue  eyes  and  the  delicate  smooth  features  that 
are  often  ascribed  to  the  "doll"  type  of  beauty.  But  she 
was  saved  from  that  inanity  by  the  shape  of  her  face  and 
the  thinness  of  her  lips.  And  her  eyes  had  an  intellectual 
steadiness  that  regarded  everything,  including  myself,  with 
a  questioning  criticism;  no  one  could  have  likened  Gladys 
to  anything  so  insipid  as  a  doll.  She  inherited  her  fair- 
ness from  her  mother.  My  uncle's  hair  still  showed  its  orig- 
inal warp  of  black  through  the  increasing  silver.  His  eyes, 
too,  were  dark.  The  Welsh  strain  showed  more  domi- 
nantly  in  him  than  in  my  mother. 

My  attitude  towards  Gladys  during  that  fortnight  at  East- 
bourne passed  from  that  of  a  casual  relation  into  a  recogni- 
tion of  friendship.  The  change  came  about  one  morning 
quite  early  in  the  holiday. 

I  had  had  a  swim  before  breakfast,  and  went  on  alone 
to  the  Parade  to  read  the  morning  paper,  while  Gladys 
had  her  bath.  She  never  wetted  that  soft,  fair  hair  of 
hers  in  salt  water ;  and  she  looked  deliciously  neat  and  fresh, 
when  she  joined  me  about  half-past  eleven.  She  was  wear- 
ing a  frock  of  blue  linen— a  rather  keen  blue  which  she  had 
almost  perfectly  matched  in  her  sunshade — and  she  gave  a 
definite  effect  to  our  little  patch  of  the  parade.  There  was 
a  certain  fitness,  I  thought,  about  her  appearance,  there ;  I 
felt  that  the  crowd  round  us  would  be  aware  of  a  blank 
in  the  scheme  of  colour  when  she  went  away.  The  blues, 
reds,  whites  and  greens  in  other  women's  dresses  had  a 
temporary,  invading  air;  Gladys  came  with  an  effect  of 
completing  her  immediate  surroundings.  She  was  deco- 
rative and  satisfying  to  my  sense  of  values.  And  the  blue 


GLADYS  63 

lights  with  which  she  had  surrounded  herself  gave  an  added 
clearness  and  transparency  to  her  delicate,  clear  skin ;  it  re- 
minded me  in  those  conditions  of  the  soft  glaze  on  some  fine, 
mature  piece  of  china. 

She  came  prepared,  I  think,  with  a  plan  of  conversation. 
She  began  at  once  by  reverting  to  our  little  discussion  of 
the  Brussels  Law  Courts,  and  from  that  we  presently  drifted 
into  an  argument  on  the  merits  of  design  in  town-planning. 
My  vision  of  London  on  that  night  in  the  Marylebone  Road 
had  survived,  and  was  now  thrusting  up  through  my  reli- 
gious emotions,  as  the  fresh,  green  shoot  of  what  was  to  me, 
then,  a  new  idea. 

"It's  this  awful  haphazard  way  of  building,"  I  said,  "that 
makes  places  like  this;"  and  I  waved  a  reproving  hand  in 
the  direction  of  Eastbourne. 

Gladys  considered  that  for  a  moment.  "Sometimes  it's  all 
right,"  she  began,  with  a  little  perplexed  hesitation;  "old 
Brussels,  for  instance,  the  Square,  you  know,  and  the  way 
the  town  clings  to  the  hill."  And  then  she  evidently  saw 
the  solution  she  was  looking  for,  and  went  on:  "It's  only 
modern  towns  that  are  so  ugly,  isn't' it?  I  think  I  hate  all 
modern  things ;  they're  so  crude."  *^ 

"Oh!  no,"  I  protested;  "you  can't  sweep  them  all  into 
one  heap.  There's  a  lot  of  good  stuff  being  done." 

"Like  the  things  in  the  'Studio'?"  she  asked. 

I  agreed  to  admit  the  instance. 

She  shook  her  head  fastidiously.  "It  doesn't  mean  any- 
thing," she  said.  "It  doesn't  express  any  spirit.  Don't 
you  think  that  it's  all  rather  artificial?" 

I  was  not  prepared  for  that  flat  condemnation.  I  had 
never  had  to  defend  my  theories  of  a  new  spirit  in  archi- 
tecture against  a  serious  attack.  Mr.  Heaton's  criticisms 
had  no  weight,  we  knew  that  his  strong  points  were  all 
on  the  practical  side;  Geddes  dismissed  Heaton  with  a 
contemptuous  shrug.  And  the  only  other  person  who  had 
attempted  an  argument  against  us  was  Kemplay,  and  he  did 
it  for  the  sake  of  talking — he  always  ended  by  admitting 
that  he  thought  we  were  right. 


64  HOUSE-MATES 

"Oh,  it  does ;  it  isn't,"  I  protested.  I  wanted  to  be  very 
lucid  and  convincing.  I  had  no  sort  of  doubt  that  Gladys 
was  wrong,  probably  through  ignorance;  and  I  was  eager 
to  convert  her  at  once ;  it  seemed  so  absurdly  easy ;  but  I 
had  nothing  to  say. 

She  turned  and  looked  at  me,  and  the  blue  of  her  clear, 
steady  eyes  shone  out  at  me  from  the  shadow  of  her 
parasol. 

"You  believe  in  this  .  .  .  this  New  Art,  then  ?"  she  said, 
and  her  voice  conveyed  a  faint  surprise. 

"Oh !  yes,  rather,"  I  affirmed. 

"You  think  it's  going  to  grow  into  something  ?" 

Her  tone  flattered  me.  She  made  me  feel  that,  however 
unexpected  my  view  had  been,  she  was  willing  to  defer  to 
the  opinion  of  an  expert. 

"I  think  it  is  something,  now,"  I  said,  and  catching  at 
some  echo  of  Geddes'  creed,  I  went  on:  "You  see,  what 
we're  after  is  a  much  greater  simplicity,  and  in  architec- 
ture, anyway,  we  mean  to  get  more  meaning  into  building. 
All  that  old  Georgian  stuff,  you  know,  and  the  imitation 
Gothic  is  just  bad  copying.  Poelaert  was  different,  but  he 
was  an  exception.  What  we've  got  to  do  is  to  express  mod- 
ern city  construction  in  a  characteristic — er — twentieth  cen- 
tury way."  (It  had  been  such  a  relief  to  us  when  we  came 
to  the  end  of  1800  and  could  boast  a  new  era.)  "And  there 
are  the  beginnings  of  a  new  style  in  some  of  this  recent 
work.  Smith  &  Brewer's  Settlement  in  Tavistock  Place,  and 
things  like  that.  They're  not  properly  evolved  yet,  I  dare- 
say, and  some  of  them  have  got  rather  a  Byzantine  feeling 
that  must  be  got  rid  of;  but  they  are,  well,  pioneers."  I 
paused  to  find  some  final  example,  and  concluded  lamely: 
"Don't  you  like  Voysey's  stuff  ?" 

"Those  funny  houses  with  the  queer  little  buttresses?" 
she  asked. 

"Some  of  them  are  ripping,"  I  said  with  conviction. 

"Yes,  I  think,  perhaps,  some  of  them  are,"  she  admitted. 
She  still  regarded  me  with  that  air  of  poised  attention. 

"You're  very  keen,  aren't  you?"  she  continued. 


GLADYS  65 

"Oh !  yes,"  I  said.  "But  what  Geddes  and  I  want  to  see 
is  a  whole  new  town  built  on  those  lines ;  all  planned  from 
the  beginning,  you  know.  There  is  some  talk,  now,  of  a 
scheme  to  try  that — as  an  experiment  in  housing.  .  .  ." 

She  seemed  to  brood  over  that  for  a  moment,  and  then 
made  some  comment  on  the  vulgarisation  of  Eastbourne 
that  was  quite  beside  the  point.  "I  can't  think  where  that 
type  of  young  man  comes  from,"  she  said,  indicating  by  a 
quick  turn  of  her  eyes  two  youths  who  had  been  persistently 
promenading  up  and  down  our  end  of  the  parade. 

"City  clerks,"  I  said.  Geddes  and  I  were  terrible  snobs 
in  those  days. 

"They  stare  so  horribly,"  Gladys  replied. 

I  had  not  been  displeased  by  the  promenaders'  interest 
in  my  companion,  but  I  made  some  expression  of  disgust 
at  their  bad  manners. 

"You  must  tell  me  a  lot  more  about  the  new  style  in  archi- 
tecture," Gladys  began  again,  after  a  pause.  "I'm  not  quite 
a  convert  yet,  but  I  daresay  I  shall  be." 

"I  shall  certainly  do  my  best  to  convert  you,"  I  said, 
smiling. 

"Will  you?"  Gladys  asked.    "Why?" 

"It  would  be  so  jolly  if  we  could  talk  about  it  some- 
times," I  said.  I  was, aware  at  that  moment  of  stepping 
over  some  quite  negligible  obstacle  that  I  had  hitherto  re- 
garded as  insuperable.  Gladys  had  taken  a  new  semblance 
for  me  during  the  last  few  minutes.  She  had  shown  in- 
terest in  my  opinions;  she  had  by  her  criticism  of  those 
two  persistently  staring  clerks  placed  me  in  the  privileged 
circle  from  which  she  chose  her  friends ;  and  I  felt  that 
she  and  I  were  forming  some  kind  of  alliance  against  the 
indifferent  crowd  who  took  no  interest  in  the  future  of 
Art.  Her  next  sentence  warmed  me  still  further. 

"I  think  you  are  one  of  the  people  who  are  sure  to  get 
on,  Wilfred,"  she  said.  "You  are  so  keen,  aren't  you?  It's 
such  a  splendid  thing  really  to  care  as  much  as  you  do 
about  your  work." 

I  blushed  an  invisible  blush — invisible  because  like  many 


66  HOUSE-MATES 

fair  people  I  tan  red  instead  of  brown,  and  my  face  was 
then  in  a  transition  stage  of  inflammation  that  no  flush 
could  deepen. 

"I  mean  to  have  a  gobd  try,"  I  mumbled,  and  then  I  re- 
covered my  self-possession  and  boldly  stepped  over  the 
appearance  I  had  deemed  an  obstacle  into  my  cousin's 
friendship. 

"It's  a  tremendous  help  in  a  way,"  I  said,  "to  have  some 
one  like  you  to  talk  to,  Gladys.  In  the  office  the  men  are 
all  more  or  less  on  the  same  tack  as  I  am.  But  you've  been 
abroad  and  got  a  wider  view  of  things,  and  you're — I  don't 
know  exactly  what  it  is — I  suppose  it  is  that  you  are  not 
prejudiced." 

She  looked  at  me  with  a  frank,  kindly  smile — she  was 
twenty  years  older  than  I  was.  "You  mustn't  imagine  that 
I'm  an  expert,"  she  said. 

"Experts  are  always  more  or  less  prejudiced,"  I  re- 
turned. 

I  expected  a  further  compliment  from  her,  I  think.  I 
was  certainly  conscious  of  being  an  unprejudiced  expert 
just  then;  but  it  was  my  cousin's  turn  for  praise  and  her 
trap  was  a  better  one  than  mine. 

"But  I  suppose  you  often  talk  to  Aunt  Deborah  about 
your  work  and  your  ideas,"  she  said. 

"Oh !  yes,  of  course,"  I  agreed,  "but  .  .  ." 

"But  ...  ?"  she  prompted  me;  she  was  determined  to 
enjoy  her  little  triumph. 

"Oh!  well,  of  course,  she  doesn't  really  understand,"  I 
said.  "She  listens  and  agrees  with  me,  but  she  can't  criti- 
cise, and  so  on,  as  you  can." 

Gladys  gave  her  sunshade  a  little  spin  and  watched 
the  slowly  revolving  ribs  with  deep  attention.  "I've  read 
a  lot  about  architecture,"  she  admitted  modestly,  "but  I've 
never  had  much  chance  to  apply  my  reading.  Talking  to 
you  makes  it  so  real." 

I  had  had  my  return  and  was  satisfied  with  it.  As  we 
went  back  to  our  rooms  for  lunch,  we  were  very  well  pleased 
with  each  other.  But  her  pleasure  and  mine  must  have 


GLADYS  67 

been  of  very  different  kinds.  Mine  was  largely  due  to 
the  feeling  that  I  had  found  a  friend  in  my  cousin.  I 
had  come  suddenly  to  an  appreciation  of  her  quality.  She 
was,  I  thought,  both  clever  and  sympathetic.  I  was  ashamed 
of  my  old  dislike  for  her;  and  glad  that  we  should  have  so 
many  opportunities  in  the  next  ten  days  to  exchange  ideas. 
One  impersonality  still  remained  and,  if  I  had  examined  it 
that  morning,  I  should  have  regarded  it  as  a  still  further 
cause  for  satisfaction.  Gladys,  in  becoming  a  friend,  had 
not  become  more  sensibly  a  woman.  I  admired  her.  I  liked 
to  watch  her  face  and  the  finished  effect  of  the  crisp  fair 
waves  of  hair  over  her  forehead.  I  thought  her  repose 
and  her  capacity  for  stillness  very  beautiful.  I  wanted  to 
model  her  head  and  neck  and  cast  it  in  some  delicately  tinted 
soft  china.  But  I  felt  no  desire  to  kiss  her  any  more  than 
I  felt  a  desire  to  kiss  the  marble  statue  of  a  nymph  in  my 
uncle's  drawing-room  at  Ken  Lodge. 

And  I  can  only  guess  what  shape  her  pleasure  took. 

"I  do  so  much  want  to  know  about  these  things,"  she  said 
as  we  went  home.  But  I  fancy  that  knowledge  for  its  own 
sake  had  little  attraction  for  her.  It  was  enough  if  she 
could,  convincingly,  appear  to  know. 


in 

She  must  have  kept  up  that  appearance  most  admirably 
during  the  Eastbourne  time. 

We  were  free  to  see  as  much  of  one  another  as  we  pleased. 
My  uncle  only  came  down  for  long  week-ends — he  had  had 
ten  days'  holiday  before  my  mother  and  I  arrived ;  my  aunt 
Agatha  was  just  starting  a  new  illness,  neuritis,  and  found 
that  her  skin  was  peculiarly  affected  by  the  sunshine  that 
we  were  enjoying  in  such  magnificent  abundance;  and  my 
mother  very  rarely  imposed  her  company  upon  us.  She 
would  come  out  for  half  an  hour  in  the  morning,  after  she 
had  done  her  prescribed  course  of  religious  reading,  and 
would  then  return  to  sit  with  her  sister-in-law.  My  aunt  was 


68  HOUSE-MATES 

not  particularly  religious,  but  my  mother  was  a  gentle,  sym- 
pathetic creature  who  seemed  capable  of  enduring  endless 
accounts  of  the  appearance  and  precise  significance  of  my 
aunt's  more  complicated  symptoms. 

So  Gladys  and  I  spent  much  of  our  time  alone  together. 
We  went  long  walks  to  Cuckmere  and  Pevensey  and  Bex- 
hill,  which  was  then  in  a  more  or  less  experimental  stage 
and  did  not  tempt  us  to  repeat  the  visit.  And  once  we 
made  a  day  excursion  to  Hastings  by  steamer. 

Our  conversation  during  those  walks  was  not  by  any 
means  confined  to  the  theory  and  practice  of  a  new  style 
in  architecture.  Gladys  had  a  way  of  letting  our  discus- 
sions slip  into  irrelevancy;  indeed,  sometimes  when  I  was 
deeply  interested  in  my  own  subject,  she  would  chill  me  by 
an  interruption  that  made  me  wonder  if  she  had  been  lis- 
tening. Yet  she  often  initiated  those  discussions  of  ours, 
generally  by  asking  a  question.  It  seemed  as  if  she  could 
only  maintain  her  interest  for  a  little  time;  as  if  our  talk 
of  architecture  called  for  an  effort  that  soon  tired  her.  She 
would  come,  prepared,  to  the  opening  of  the  day's  argu- 
ment, but  when  her  lesson  had  been  said  she  would  ven- 
ture no  further  contribution  on  the  inspiration  of  the  mo- 
ment. So  it  usually  fell  out  that  we  began  by  sharpening 
up  some  point  that  had  been  left  hanging  the  day  before, 
and  then  come  to  some  account  of  Gladys's  experiences  in 
Belgium.  After  the  first  two  or  three  days,  I  had  definitely 
become  the  teacher  in  my  own  subject,  and  it  was  only  fair 
to  give  her  an  opportunity  to  play  the  informant. 

I  am  putting  this  all  down  as  I  see  it  now;  but  as  a 
matter  of  fact  I  did  not  come  to  any  serious  reflections  on 
Gladys's  intelligence  for  nearly  two  years.  And  during 
that  Eastbourne  holiday  I  only  remember  one  occasion  on 
which  I  approached  anything  like  criticism. 

We  were  on  the  steamer  coming  back  from  Hastings.  It 
was  a  clear,  still  evening,  but  after  the  warmth  of  the  day 
the  air  felt  cold  and  the  wind  of  our  movement  had  driven 
the  majority  of  our  fellow  excursionists  to  take  up  posi- 
tions aft  of  the  deck-houses.  Gladys  and  I  were  standing 


GLADYS  69 

in  the  bows  staring  at  the  headland  which  formed  the  other 
point  of  the  long,  shallow  bay  we  were  crossing  on  the  chord 
of  its  arc.  We  could  not  believe  that  that  point  was  Beachy 
Head,  it  looked  so  absurdly  near,  a  quarter  of  an  hour's 
journey,  at  most,  and  yet  we  knew  that  the  distance  from 
Hastings  to  Eastbourne  by  sea  was  fifteen  miles. 

"There  can't  be  any  doubt  about  it,"  I  said,  at  last. 
"Look,  that's  the  awful  Bexhill  over  there;  the  half-way 
mark." 

"It  does  seem  incredible,  though,  doesn't  it  ?"  Gladys  com- 
mented. We  were  both  a  little  excited,  as  people  are 
when  they  meet  some  unusual  phenomenon  of  this  kind. 
The  sight  of  an  extraordinary  meteor,  the  experience  of 
an  unprecedented  storm;  the  realisation  of  any  happening 
that  suddenly  contradicts  the  dull  normality  of  our  ex- 
pectation, puts  us  for  a  moment  outside  physical  life. 
There  is  something  of  mystery  and  adventure  in  most  ab- 
normalities. I  have  wondered  if  the  spirit  is  quickened  by 
a  memory  of  all  that  lies  beyond  the  logic  of  natural  law. 
And  is  not  some  element  of  surprise  present  in  every  true 
work  of  Art — surprise  that  stirs  a  sense  of  amazed  recog- 
nition ? 

And  then  Gladys  shivered  and  snuggled  herself  a  little 
closer  inside  the  knitted  coat  she  had  brought  to  wear  on 
the  steamer. 

"Yes,  it  is  cold,  now,"  she  said,  in  answer  to  my  com- 
ment. 

"Let's  get  behind  one  of  the  deck-houses,"  I  suggested. 

She  looked  back  along  the  deck  and  shook  her  head. 

"Why  not?"  I  asked. 

She  screwed  up  her  nose  in  a  pretty  little  intimation 
of  disgust.  "I — don't — like — the  people — much"  she  said 
confidingly. 

"Oh!  I  see,"  was  my  rather  hesitating  response. 

"They're  dreadfully  common,  aren't  they?"  she  persisted. 

"Quite  clean  and  sober,  though,"  I  admitted. 

She  screwed  up  her  nose  again.  "Oh!  yes,"  she  said, 
"but  one  doesn't  want  to  be  too  near  them." 


70  HOUSE-MATES 

I  feebly  concurred,  preferring  to  remain  in  the  limelight 
of  my  cousin's  approval  rather  than  attempt  the  expres- 
sion of  the  thought  that  had  been  weakly  stirring  within  me. 

I  think  I  must  have  been  on  the  edge  of  a  "moment"  just 
then.  I  knew  that  the  little  excitement  of  watching  the 
phantom  headland,  so  mysteriously  near  and  unapproach- 
able, had  roused  in  me  a  feeling  of  fellowship  with  hu- 
manity ;  a  feeling  that  had  curious-ly  enough  not  been  very 
prominent  in  my  great  religious  upheaval.  And  Gladys 
broke  my  mood.  She  interfered  between  me  and  some- 
thing precious  that  I  longed  to  grasp.  For  one  dragging 
second  of  time  I  was  resentful;  I  had  moved  beyond  the 
circle  of  her  influence  and  I  criticised  her.  Then  the  day 
enclosed  me  again  and  I  wondered  at  my  own  impulse. 

But  of  all  the  surreptitious  creepings  within  the  hard 
shell  that  still  so  lightly  bound  me,  this  was  the  first  that 
seems  now  to  have  been  truly  indicative.  I  think  my  feath- 
ers were  coming. 

IV 

I  became  engaged  to  Gladys  the  following  summer. 

I  was  cuddling  down  into  orthodoxy,  with  every  hope 
of  establishing  myself  before  long  in  a  comfortable  niche 
that  would  enclose  and  protect  me  from  the  risks  of  life. 

My  uncle  had  recently  introduced  me  to  his  friend,  Rollo 
Parkinson,  who  was  vaguely  "looking  about  for  a  place 
down  in  Buckinghamshire,"  and  had  stated  his  intention 
of  building  a  house  for  himself  as  soon  as  the  ideal  place 
was  found. 

I  had  done  a  few  sketches  for  him,  and  he  had  told 
my  uncle  that  I  seemed  "a  very  clever  young  fellow," 
and  that  he  might  be  able  to  put  a  lot  of  work  in  my  way. 

As  a  prospect,  Parkinson  and  my  uncle  seemed  to  promise 
better  than  the  competitions  Geddes  and  I  so  faithfully  and 
fruitlessly  entered  for. 

I  proposed  to  Gladys  one  Sunday  morning  after  service. 
We  left  her  father  <md  mother  and  the  prayer  books  at 


GLADYS  71 

Ken  Lodge  on  our  way  up  Heath  Street,  and  went  on  up 
to  the  flagstaff.  The  vicinity  of  the  Whitestone  pond,  how- 
ever, was  unendurably  clamorous  with  the  barking  of  dogs 
retrieving,  or  refusing  to  retrieve,  sticks ;  and  we  wandered 
down  towards  the  Vale  of  Health  and  found  a  quiet  little 
seat  facing  over  the  valley  towards  Highgate. — From  that 
distance  I  can  always  deceive  myself  into  thinking  of  High- 
gate  as  a  village,  and  I  get  a  romantic  satisfaction  from 
the  pretence.  For  some  reason  it  has  always  delighted  me 
to  imagine  parts  of  London  as  being  something  other  than 
they  actually  are. 

I  began  to  display  the  fancy  to  Gladys,  but  her  response 
did  not  encourage  me.  She  played  the  game  too  intelli- 
gently; and  by  recreating  the  Highgate  associated  with 
Whittington,  somehow  turned  my  vision  into  a  history 
lesson. 

I  was  quite  ready  for  a  change  of  subject  when  she 
began  to  talk  of  Parkinson. 

"I'm  so  glad  you  pleased  him,  Wilfred,"  she  said.  "He 
has  got  a  heap  of  influential  friends  and  he  may  be  very 
useful  to  you." 

I  agreed  willingly.  My  only  objection  to  Parkinson  was 
his  obstinate  insistence  that  the  Queen  Anne  manner  was 
the  one  possible  style  for  the  house  he  had  in  mind.  I 
had  suppled  myself  to  his  opinion  in  the  designs  I  had 
made,  but  Geddes  had  been  down  on  any  weakness.  "After 
all,  it's  his  house,"  I  had  said;  and  Geddes  had  given  me 
a  lecture  on  the  necessity  for  educating  one's  clientele.  I 
should  have  liked  to  see  him  educating  Parkinson.  He 
would  have  tried,  of  course,  and  lost  the  job. 

"I'm  sure,  if  you  once  get  a  start  in  private  practice, 
that  you'll  be  a  big  success,"  Gladys  went  on  thoughtfully, 
and  she  turned  her  eyes  from  their  contemplation  of  the 
Heath  and  looked  at  me  with  a  gentleness  and  a  shyness 
I  had  not  seen  in  her  face  before. 

"It's  ripping  of  you  to  take  so  much  interest  in  me,"  I 
said.  Her  interest  still  flattered  me.  If  there  is  a  charm 
to  some  men  in  the  ideal  of  an  exquisite  remoteness,  they 


72  HOUSE-MATES 

would  surely  have  found  my  cousin  a  beautiful  object  for 
worship. 

She  blushed  delicately,  her  cheeks  warming  for  a  mo- 
ment to  the  timid  rose  of  a  shell.  "I  have  always  felt," 
she  said  in  a  low  voice,  "ever  since  Eastbourne,  that  your 
destiny  and  mine  are  mixed  up  together." 

Before  she  made  that  speech  I  should  have  regarded 
the  idea  of  asking  Gladys  to  marry  me  as  nothing  more 
than  ludicrous.  I  had  never  thought  of  her  as  a  possible 
wife.  But,  now,  I  knew  beyond  the  possibility  of  doubt 
that  she  intended  to  be  engaged  to  me ;  that  she  had  amaz- 
ingly offered  me  this  wonderful  gift  of  herself.  I  felt  a 
little  as  if  some  one  had  offered  me  a  priceless  piece  of 
statuary. 

I  was  dreadfully  clumsy  over  my  acceptance. 

"By  Jove,  have  you  really  ?"  I  said,  and  jny  tone  was  one 
of  awestruck  wonder  rather  than  rapture. 

"Always,"  she  said.  She  sat  very  still  and  was  appar- 
ently gazing  at  the  south  elevation  of  Highgate  Church, 
starting  out  clear-cut  in  the  sunshine  like  a  plaster  model. 

"But,  Gladys,"  I  said,  "you  don't  mean  that  you  could 
ever  .  .  •.  that  I  could  .  .  .  ?" 

"Because  of  our  being  first  cousins?"  she  asked,  without 
moving. 

"No,  I  hadn't  thought  of  that,"  I  said.  I  was  paralysed 
by  a  doubt  as  to  whether  I  ought  to  kiss  her.  I  found  an 
escape  from  that  in  the  reflection  that  our  situation  was  too 
public.  I  gently  touched  one  of  her  white-gloved  hands 
instead.  The  hand  was  conveniently  near  mine  at  the 
moment. 

"But,  Gladys,"  I  repeated,  determined  to  have  the  con- 
ditions of  my  option  perfectly  clear,  "is  it  possible  that 
you  like  me  enough  to  marry  me?" 

"I  have  always  liked  you,"  she  said  quietly.  Her  hand 
moved  confidingly  in  mine,  and  she  dismissed  Highgate 
Church  from  her  attention  and  looked  at  me  with  the  same 
gentle  shyness  that  had  introduced  our  new  relations. 

"It — it  seems  so  incredible — that  you  should,"  I  mur- 


GLADYS  73 

mured.  I  tried  to  look  at  her  and  had  not  the  courage. 
My  blush  was  to  hers  as  the  peony  to  the  wild-rose. 

For  what  seemed  a  very  considerable  time  we  sat  in 
silence,  still  nervously  holding  each  other's  hand.  I  believe 
that  some  obscure  corner  of  my  mind  was  wondering  where 
I  should  put  her.  I  knew  that  she  must  always  have  a  ped- 
estal. I  found  my  way  back  to  speech  by  the  usual  con- 
ventional suggestion. 

"Do  you  want  me  to  tell  them?"  I  asked.  "Uncle  David 
and  my  mother?" 

"I  don't,  see  why  we  shouldn't,"  Gladys  said. 

"You  don't  think  he'll  mind;  Uncle  David,  I  mean?" 

She  smiled  confidently.  "You  can  leave  him  to  me," 
she  said,  and  then  added:  "Are  you  so  frightened  of  him?" 

"I  am,  rather,"  I  admitted. 

"You're  not  frightened  of  me,  too,  are  you  ?"  she  asked. 

I  found  courage  to  look  up  at  her,  then,  and  her  eyes 
were  bright  and  had  in  them  some  light  of  conquest  that 
reminded  me  of  the  eyes  of  Adela  Lynneker. 

"You  are  so  very  beautiful,  Gladys,"  I  said  with  a  sigh. 
"In  a  way,  you — you  do,  rather,  awe  me." 

"How  silly!"  she  commented  gaily,  but  I  saw  that  she 
was  pleased. 

"I  should  never  dare  to — to  kiss  you,"  I  said. 

She  looked  gaily  over  her  shoulder,  shifted  her  sunshade 
and  bent  towards  me  with  a  quick  gesture  of  invitation. 

My  hand  tightened  convulsively  on  hers  as  I  touched  her 
soft  smooth  cheek;  and  then  my  other  hand  clasped  her 
arm  and  I  kissed  her  lips. 

She  permitted  me  that  embrace  long  enough  for  my  con- 
sciousness to  be  aware  of  her  touch,  before  she  jumped  up 
blushing,  warmly  now,  as  if  she  had,  at  last,  felt  the  pulse 
of  hot  life. 

"You  soon  overcame  your  fright,  dear,"  she  said  with  a 
little  air  of  reproof. 

"Let's  go  and  tell  them,"  I  said,  and  I  took  her  hand 
in  my  arm  and  we  walked  back.  I  had  no  doubt,  just  then, 
that  I  loved  my  cousin  to  distraction. 


74.  HOUSE-MATES 


My  uncle  took  me  into  his  study  after  dinner.  They 
dined  in  the  middle  of  the  day  on  Sunday  and  had  a  cold 
supper  at  night.  Our  talk,  however,  was  the  merest  con- 
vention; there  was  nothing  to  be  said. 

I  always  think  of  my  uncle  as  being  a  little  man.  He 
was,  I  suppose,  about  five  feet  seven,  or  eight,  but  I  am 
exactly  six  feet  in  my  socks  and  apt  to  forget  that  my 
height  is  something  above  the  average.  I  cannot  pretend 
that  I  understood  him  or  his  motives.  He  was  just  an 
uncle  to  me,  then;  a  fact  to  be  accepted  as  one  accepted 
the  usual  phenomena  of  existence.  His  face  was  deeply 
lined,  more  particularly  about  the  mouth,  and  he  had  a  way 
of  peering  at  one  with  a  rather  suspicious  frown  that 
made  some  people  feel  uncomfortable.  But  I  fancy  that 
that  was  largely  an  acquired  mannerism  due  to  an  effort 
to  disguise  a  tic  that  perhaps  had  worried  him  in  earlier 
life.  The  facial  spasm  took  the  form,  in  his  case,  of  a 
portentous  wink  of  the  left  eye;  and  no  doubt  he  had 
had  to  assume  a  forced  sternness  in  order  to  allay  the 
suspicion  that  his  wink  might  be  due  to  an  unprofessional 
levity.  He  had,  too,  a  very  deliberate  habit  of  speech, 
filling  his  pauses  with  a  sound  that  might  be  written  "er — 
hum— er,"  the  "hum"  taking  the  shape  of  a  cough  that 
never  went  deeper  than  the  back  of  his  throat.  It  would  be 
too  tedious  to  report  him;  but  the  effect  he  had  upon 
me  was  chiefly  due  to  these  external  symptoms  which  filled 
me  not  with  laughter,  as  might  possibly  be  expected,  but 
with  an  odd  sense  of  apprehension.  Whenever  he  spoke  to 
me  alone  I  felt  as  if  he  were  preparing  the  way  for  some 
awful  revelation. 

That  Sunday  afternoon  I  certainly  had  cause  for  uneasi- 
ness. Gladys  had  spoken  very  confidently  of  her  father's 
attitude  towards  our  engagement,  but  I  was  painfully  aware 
of  ^my  own  ineligibility  when  Uncle  David  began : 

"Gladys  has  told  me— er— hum— has  told  me — er — that 


GLADYS  75 

you  have,"  and  then  came  a  pause  for  that  tremendous  wink, 
"er — hum,  made  her  a  proposal  of  marriage."  And  it  all 
came  out  in  the  tone  of  a  speaker  who  makes  a  solemn 
announcement  at  a  public  meeting. 

I  believe  I  was  in  the  study  with  him  for  the  best  part 
of  an  hour,  but,  as  I  have  said,  neither  of  us  had  anything 
to  say.  My  uncle  winked  and  "er — hummed"  himself 
gravely  through  the  ceremony  of  what  he  supposed  was 
the  inevitable  interview,  and  left  me  only  wiser  by  the 
knowledge  that  I  was  to  make  some  sort  of  a  position  for 
myself  before  the  marriage  could  take  place.  He  said 
something  about  three  years  as  the  probationary  period, 
but  he  did  not  make  a  special  point  of  it. 

I  was  not  at  all  depressed  by  the  advice  that  I  must 
be  making  a  living  as  an  architect  in  private  practice  be- 
fore I  married  my  cousin.  I  meant  to  achieve  that  ambi- 
tion fairly  soon  in  any  case,  and  I  could  count,  now,  more 
surely  than  ever  on  my  uncle's  backing.  Also,  I  was  not 
in  any  hurry  to  marry  Gladys.  It  was  glorious  to  be  en- 
gaged to  her,  but  the  thought  of  her  affected  me  with  none 
of  the  impatience  that  I  had  sometimes  felt  before  a  visit 
to  Nellie  Roberts. 

I  was  proud  of  that  difference  of  feeling.  I  counted 
it  as  a  sign  that  my  love  for  Gladys  was  of  the  best  and 
purest  quality,  purged  of  the  physical  yearnings  that  seemed 
to  me  at  that  time  horribly  gross  and  material.  There 
was,  I  think,  a  great  similarity  between  my  emotions  dur- 
ing the  first  months  of  my  engagement  and  those  I  had  ex- 
perienced during  my  religious  fit.  Both  were  etherealised 
and  abstract;  they  lacked  the  element  of  love  for  my  own 
kind  that  might  have  given  them  reality.  If  that  motive 
had  stirred  me  during  my  evanescent  worship  of  some 
tenuous  ideal  of  purity,  I  should  have  certainly  taken  or- 
ders and  gone  out  into  the  world  as  an  evangel,  instead 
of  secretly  cherishing  some  pharasaical  conception  of  my 
own  righteousness. 

What  would  have  been  the  result  if  Gladys  had  warmed 
me  to  a  more  urgent  desire,  I  cannot  say;  but  I  imagine 


76  HOUSE-MATES 

that  she  would  have  shrunk  from  any  manifestation  of 
passion.  Once  or  twice,  when  I  kissed  her  with  unusual 
zeal,  she  winced  a  little;  and  afterwards  I  felt  ashamed, 
as  if  I  had  taken  too  coarse  a  liberty  with  so  fine  and 
sensitive  a  creature. 

Another  point  of  similarity  between  my  spasmodic  de- 
votions to  God  and  Gladys  was  shown  in  my  desire  to 
cherish  the  secret  of  my  ecstasy.  It  is  comprehensible 
enough  that  I  should  have  said  nothing  to  Geddes  or 
Kemplay;  for  just  as  I  had  known  myself  unable  to  ex- 
press to  them  my  new-found  idea  of  God,  so  also  was  I 
aware  of  my  inability  to  describe  the  exquisite  quality 
of  my  fiancee.  But  I  might  have  found  a  confidante  in  my 
mother.  She  was  willing  enough  to  listen.  I  believe  she 
wished  to  see  me  married. 

She  knew,  of  course,  that  she  would  come  to  live  with 
us;  our  relations  were  such  that  a  separation  was  incon- 
ceivable, and  we  only  spoke  of  that  once,  when  she  rather 
shakily  enquired  where  I  thought  I  should  live  after  my 
marriige. 

I  was  of  opinion  that  we  could  not  do  better  than  Hamp- 
stead  or  Highgate. 

My  mother  agreed;  those  two  suburbs  were  all  London 
to  her — she  very  rarely  went  as  far  as  Oxford  Street,  and 
had  never  been  inside  a  theatre  in  her  life.  Then  she  made 
her  one  tentative  suggestion  by  saying: 

"I  suppose  I  could  stay  on  here?" 

I  laughed.  "But,  of  course,  you'll  come  to  live  with  us 
wherever  we  go,"  I  said. 

"Are  you  sure  Gladys  would  like  that?"  my  mother 
asked. 

I  had  never  mentioned  the  idea  to  my  cousin,  but  I  re- 
plied without  the  least  hesitation.  "Rather.  We've  never 
thought  of  anything  else,"  I  said. 

My  mother  was  watching  my  face  with  a  certain 
anxiety,  but  her  doubt  was  not  as  to  my  intentions  with 
regard  to  herself. 

"You  might  feel  that  you  want  to  be  alone  for  a  time," 


GLADYS  77 

she  ventured ;  and  she  knew  that  she  was  approaching  the 
subject  I  dared  not  discuss,  the  reality  of  my  love  for 
Gladys. 

"I  couldn't  possibly  marry  if  you  didn't  come  to  live 
with  us,"  I  said.  "So  we  needn't  talk  about  that  any 
more." 

And  nothing  more  was  said  then.  My  mother  kissed  me 
and  thanked  God  for  having  given  her  such  a  good  son. 
But  afterwards  she  often  hovered  on  the  verge  of  a  more 
direct  question. 

I  wonder,  now,  whether  she  was  not  divided  between 
her  love  for  me,  between  her  genuine  desire  for  my  happi- 
ness, and  something  that  can  only  be  called  jealousy.  She 
had  moments  when  she  realised  far  more  of  my  feeling 
for  Gladys  than  I  knew  myself.  She  was  afraid  for  me, 
and  yet  at  the  same  time  glad  that  my  devotion  to  herself 
was  not  interfered  with.  She  must  have  had  some  crucial 
struggles  with  her  own  conscience,  if  I  am  right,  for  she 
was  extraordinarily  honest  with  herself. 

Perhaps,  if  I  had  been  equally  honest,  I  should  have 
drawn  some  inference  from  the  sincere  statement  of  my 
determination  not  to  marry  unless  my  mother  came  to  live 
with  us.  But,  if  a  doubt  crossed  my  mind,  I  put  it  away 
from  me  at  once.  I  was  in  love  with  my  enjoyment  of 
life;  my  chief  outside  interest  at  the  moment  was  my 
engagement  to  Gladys,  and  I  would  not  have  sacrificed  it 
from  any  scruple  of  conscience.  I  turned  my  back  on 
my  doubts  as  upon  some  denial  of  beauty;  or,  better  still, 
dissipated  them  by  watching  Gladys  and  thinking  myself 
into  a  condition  of  worship. 


VI 

It  was  a  very  trivial  incident  that  suddenly  woke  me 
from  my  dream  and  set  me  to  face  what  I  could  only 
regard  as  the  very  difficult  problem  of  my  future. 

We  had  been  engaged  for  nearly  eleven  months,  then; 


78  HOUSE-MATES 

and  the  first  fruits  of  my  uncle's  influence  and  backing 
had  matured  in  the  form  of  a  definite  commission  from 
Mr.  Parkinson.  He  had  at  last  found  a  site  that  suited 
him,  not  far  from  West  Wycombe,  and  I  had  been  down 
to  see  it  and  was  getting  out  drawings  for  the  house 
he  proposed  to  erect.  It  was  to  cost  £3,500.  My  mother 
spoke  hopefully  of  a  scheme  to  set  me 'up  with  an  office 
of  my  own.  Nothing  had  been  said  of  that  to  my  uncle 
as  yet,  but  she  believed  that  he  would  be  willing  to  finance 
me  until  I  was  earning  enough  to  pay  my  own  way.  The 
corollary  to  this  proposition  was  an  early  marriage  with 
Gladys.  In  my  mother's  mind  the  last  suggestion  figured 
partly,  I  think,  as  an  insurance  against  all  possible  fail- 
ures. She  knew  her  brother's  weakness  with  regard  to 
spending  money,  and  wanted  to  clinch  his  responsibility. 
He  might  find  some  excuse  for  neglecting  me,  but  he  would 
never  permit  his  daughter  to  suffer. 

And,  at  the  time,  that  proposition  appeared  to  me  as 
just  and  honourable.  It  was  all  in  the  general  scheme 
of  life  as  I  knew  it.  I  had  confidence  in  my  own  ability 
to  earn  a  comfortable  income  as  soon  as  I  could  make 
my  name  known.  I  had  already  had  designs  and  articles 
published  in  two  building  papers,  and  received  a  few 
letters  concerning  them,  one  of  which  contained  a  definite 
enquiry  from  a  possible  client.  That  was  another  way 
of  escape  from  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  it  seemed  to  promise 
well.  I  had,  indeed,  little  doubt  of  my  professional  fu- 
ture; and  I  should,  therefore,  have  had  no  qualms  about 
accepting  temporary  assistance  from  my  -father-in-law.  I 
was  planning  my  niche  in  society  just  as  Geddes  or  Horton- 
Smith  were  planning  theirs.  We  were  intent  on  the  com- 
mon purpose  that  had  been  held  up  to  us  as  the  chief 
object  of  our  lives.  We  had  to  mark  out  our  place  in 
the  congeries;  find  security,  a  home,  a  limited  circle  of 
acquaintances;  set  a  label  on  ourselves  and  live  within 
the  rule  of  our  class.  At  twenty-seven  I  had  outgrown  the 
more  romantic  ambitions  of  my  youth.  Cathedrals  and 
great  public  buildings  no  longer  filled  my  dreams.  I  had 


GLADYS  79 

discovered  my  limitations  and  marked  my  future  place 
in  society.  At  the  best,  I  saw  myself  succeeding  Norman 
Shaw  as  an  architect  of  private  houses. 

These  anticipations  were  quite  definitely  in  the  fore- 
ground of  my  consciousness.  If  they  had  been  fulfilled,  I 
should  have  remained  a  shapely,  admirable  egg.  But,  all 
unknown  to  me,  another  spasm  was  convulsing  my  spirit, 
and  this  time  it  found  expression  in  a  new  shape.  .  .  . 

Gladys  had  always  refused  to  play  tennis  or  croquet 
with  me  in  the  Ken  Lodge  garden.  Games  did  not  interest 
her,  she  protested.  I  should  often  have  preferred  tennis, 
and  even  croquet,  to  conversation  in  the  presence  of  Aunt 
Agatha — I  have  always  been  as  keen  on  games  as  the  aver- 
age young  Englishman — but  none  of  my  tentative  efforts 
after  persuasion  hud  ever  induced  Gladys  to  take  up  a 
racquet  or  a  mallet.  She  did  not,  theoretically,  condemn 
games;  she  would  sit  and  watch  them  being  played;  but 
she  said  that  she  never  felt  the  least  wish  to  play  herself. 

I  accepted  that  attitude  without  resentment  or  criti- 
cism. It  seemed  to  me  typical  of  Gladys.  It  seemed 
to  keep  her  on  the  pedestal  she  graced  so  becomingly. 
And  then,  one  Saturday  afternoon,  I  saw  her  with  both 
feet  on  the  earth,  and  I  could  never  put  her  back  on  her 
throne. 

I  called  at  Ken  Lodge  on  my  way  back  from  the  office. 
I  had  told  Gladys  that  I  should  not  come  that  afternoon; 
I  had  meant  to  go  home  and  work ;  but  as  I  came  up  on  the 
bus  to  Pond  Street,  I  was  tempted  by  the  beauty  of  the 
day,  and  I  decided  to  fetch  Gladys  and  go  for  a  walk  across 
the  Heath  to  .Highgate. 

It  must  have  been  nearly  three  o'clock  when  I  came 
to  the  house,  and  the  maid  told  me  that  my  aunt  was  in 
bed  and  my  uncle  not  yet  home  from  the  city,  but  that  she 
believed  Miss  Gladys  was  in  the  drawing-room.  I  was  very 
much  at  home  in  that  house,  and  I  walked  into  the  drawing- 
room  unannounced. 

Gladys  was  not  there ;  she  was  playing  tennis  on  the  lawn 


80  HOUSE-MATES 

outside  with  a  little  girl  of  fourteen  or  fifteen,  the  daughter 
of  a  Hampstead  friend. 

I  stood  at  the  drawing-room  window  and  watched  them, 
and  all  the  spell  of  my  engagement  was  suddenly  broken. 

The  Gladys  I  saw  was  no  longer  the  still,  graceful  woman 
who  had  seemed  to  me  the  incarnation  of  delicate  beauty. 
She  was  a  gawky,  clumsy  creature,  incredibly  inept  at  the 
game  she  was  attempting  to  play.  She  ran  awkwardly,  the 
movements  of  her  arms  and  body  were  horribly  ungrace- 
ful; and  yet  she  was  entering  into  the  game  with  some- 
thing of  eagerness.  She  was  manifestly  doing  her  best 
to  win. 

And  I  saw  her  instantly  as  a  "poseuse."  I  felt  no  resent- 
ment against  her  for  having  lied  about  her  distaste  for 
games.  She  had,  indeed,  a  most  excellent  reason  for  lying, 
since  she  must  certainly  have  known  that  the  effort  could 
only  be  made  at  the  sacrifice  of  her  whole  effect.  I  could 
understand  and  endure  her  untruth,  even  applaud  her  mo- 
tive for  maintaining  it.  What  released  me  was  my  realisa- 
tion of  Gladys's  personality.  She  was,  I  saw  all  too  vividly, 
only  a  semblance.  More  than  once,  recently,  I  had  had 
passing  doubts  as  to  her  intellectual  capacity.  We  had  seen 
so  much  of  one  another  during  the  past  twelve  months 
that  it  was  inevitable  she  should  slip  sometimes;  and  she 
had  slipped  on  occasion  quite  unmistakably.  And  I  had 
wondered  for  a  moment  and  then  found  half  a  dozen  expla- 
nations, she  was  tired,  she  had  been  inattentive ;  I  had  mis- 
understood her.  .  .  .  Now,  I  understood  beyond  any  pos- 
sibility of  doubt.  I  knew  that  her  interest  in  Art  and 
Literature  was  no  less  a  pose  than  her  still  grace  of  move- 
ment. She  affected  those  interests;  she  wore  them  taste- 
fully displayed  in  telling  suggestions,  reserves,  and  admis- 
sions of  ignorance.  One  talent  she  had,  and  so  far  as  I 
guessed  then,  only  one :  her  genius  for  knowing  what  suited 
her.  ^  There  was  a  real  woman  underneath  her  affectations, 
but  it  was  not  the  woman  that  had  won  my  admiration. 

I  crept  quietly  out  of  the  drawing-room  as  if  I  had  wit- 
nessed something  disgraceful  and  obscene.  As  I  walked 


GLADYS  81 

home  the  sight  of  the  gawky  girl  who  was  my  fiancee 
haunted  me. 

I  wanted,  now,  to  confide  in  my  mother;  to  tell  her  the 
whole  story  of  my  illusion.  I  desired  her  consolation  when 
I  was  in  pain,  if  I  had  an  instinct  to  conceal  my  joys.  But 
I  could  not  tell  her  about  this  because  I  believed  that  it 
was  a  secret  I  was  bound  in  honour  to  hide.  I  had  no 
excuse  for  breaking  off  my  engagement,  and  I  still  meant  to 
carry  out  my  part  in  the  contract ;  even  to  marry  the  woman 
who  lived  under  the  appearance  I  had  known. 

I 
VII 

It  is  quite  possible  that  self-interest  played  a  part  in  the 
making  of  this  decision;  but  the  alternative  might  have 
daunted  a  braver,  more  honest  man  than  I  was.  Much 
courage  is  required  to  defy  the  conventions  when  the  de- 
fiance will  make  one  appear  not  as  a  hero  but  as  a  fool. 
The  world  in  which  I  lived  would  not  have  accepted  the 
excuse  that  I  had  ceased  to  care  for  Gladys.  My  mother 
would  have  been  deeply  grieved,  my  uncle  permanently 
offended,  all  our  friends  would  have  thought  me  dishon- 
ourable ;  and  Gladys — no,  I  do  not  know  how  Gladys  would 
have  been  affected.  It  certainly  weighed  with  me  that  she 
might  suffer.  After  my  first  violent  reaction  against  her, 
I  found  something  very  pathetic  in  her  magnificent  effort 
of  make-believe — I  could  not  have  sustained  such  a  part 
for  a  week.  And  beyond  and  after  these  excellent  reasons 
for  carrying  on  the  engagement  remained  a  perfectly  rea- 
sonable consideration  for  my  own  future. 

I  awoke  to  a  depressed  struggle  with  this  problem  early 
on  Sunday  morning,  and  answered  it  as  most  other  young 
men  would  have  answered  it.  Something  must  be  sacri- 
ficed, and  the  offering  I  proposed  to  lay  on  the  altar  was 
some  vague  idea  of  love  or  it  may  be  only  of  emotion. 
Outwardly  the  glory  remained.  None  of  our  friends  would 
know,  as  I  did,  that  Gladys  was  a  mere  simulacrum. 


82  HOUSE-MATES 

One  more  point  remained  to  be  settled,  and  that  was  my 
attitude  towards  Gladys  herself.  In  the  course  of  morn- 
ing service  I  had  a  romantic  yearning  to  be  quite  honest 
with  her.  I  saw  myself  as  being  rather  splendid,  and 
having  an  effect  upon  her  that  amounted  to  "conversion." 
I  could  just  see  her  perfect  profile  from  my  seat,  and  I  pic- 
tured a  scene  in  which  Gladys  wept  honestly  but  still  beau- 
tifully. I  was  moved  to  great  tenderness  at  the  thought 
of  her  confession.  I  believed  that  I  might  find  a  way 
out  of  all  my  perplexities  by  creating  a  new  image  of  our 
relations  to  one  another,  and  she  was  to  be  adoring,  pliable 
and  grateful. 

That  sentimental  dream  was  finally  dissipated  before 
dinner. 

We  did  not  go  on  up  to  the  Heath  together  that  morning. 
There  had  been  a  heavy  shower  while  we  were  in  church 
and  the  streets  were  steaming  in  hot  sunshine  when  we 
came  out.  But  wonderful  tumultuous  masses  of  cumulus 
were  piled  high  in  the  south-west,  and  Gladys  thought  we 
had  better  not  go  too  far  from  home;  so  when  she  had 
taken  off  her  hat,  we  went  and  sat  on  the  back-lawn  where 
we  were  not  overlooked  from  the  house. 

I  was  foolishly  nervous.  Now  that  I  was  alone  with  her, 
I  could  not  recall  the  picture  of  a  Gladys  either  pliable 
or  grateful.  She  was  so  amazingly  the  same  as  she  had 
always  been ;  and  my  memory  of  her  as  she  appeared  play- 
ing tennis  was  as  the  thought  of  a  phantasm  that  had  had 
no  reality.  If  the  initiative  had  been  left  to  me,  I  should 
have  made  no  reference  to  the  previous  afternoon ;  but  she 
began  at  once  by  saying: 

"Ellen  says  you  came  yesterday,  after  all ;  why  didn't  you 
stay?" 

I  looked  in  vain  for  any  sign  of  embarrassment  as  she 
spoke.  There  was  a  shade  of  asperity  in  her  tone,  but  she 
had  often  censured  me  recently  with  just  the  same  sugges- 
tion of  thin  disapproval. 

"Oh!  I  don't  know,"  I  said.  "I  had  to  go  home  and 
work," 


GLADYS  83 

' 

"But  you  told  me  you  weren't  coming  at  all,"  she  per- 
sisted. "Why  did  you  change  your  mind?" 

I  began  to  suspect  an  uneasiness  underlying  her  indirect 
questions,  but  I  had  no  intention  of  leading  her  on  when 
I  replied: 

"It  was  such  a  jolly  afternoon.  I  thought  you  might  like 
to  come  for  a  walk." 

She  frowned  without  disfiguring  the  smooth  whiteness 
of  her  straight  forehead — just  the  least  puckering  of  the 
eyes  and  a  droop  of  the  eyebrows  expressed  her  annoyance. 

"But,  my  dear  Wilfred,"  she  remonstrated,  "why  are  you 
so  mysterious?  Really,  I  don't  understand.  You  came  to 
tell  me  you  had  to  work,  you  say,  a  fact  that  I  knew 
already,  and  in  the  same  breath  you  say  that  you  came  to 
fetch  me  out  for  a  walk.  Now,  which  do  you  mean  ?" 

"I  came  to  fetch  you  out,  I  suppose,"  I  said;  and  even 
then  she  feinted  rather  than  ask  me  directly  why  I  had 
changed  my  mind.  I  was  sure,  then,  that  she  knew. 

"You  are  perfectly  incomprehensible  at  times,  dear,"  she 
said. 

I  felt  as  if  I  were  doing  a  very  brave  thing  when  I  re- 
plied :  "You  were  playing  tennis.  I  didn't  care  to  interrupt 
you."  I  looked  away  across  the  lawn  with  an  instinctive 
wish  to  spare  her.  I  believed  that  she  would  be  shamed.  I 
was  genuinely  astonished  when  I  heard  her  little  tinkling 
laugh. 

"Oh!  Wilfred,  I  wasn't,"  she  said.  "That  little  Burton 
child  came  round  and  I  had  to  amuse  her  somehow.  You 
know  I  hate  tennis ;  we  were  only  knocking  the  balls  about. 
I  should  have  thought  you  would  have  guessed  how  thank- 
ful I  should  have  been  for  any  interruption.  You  really 
are  extraordinarily  dense  at  times." 

I  could  not  go  on  with  that  subject.  In  a  sense  I  was 
afraid.  I  had  realised  the  perfect  futility  of  the  dream 
I  had  had  in  church,  and  understood  now,  far  better  than 
I  had  the  day  before,  the  quality  of  my  cousin's  pose.  It 
had  crystallised ;  taken,  as  it  were,  a  hard,  unvarying  sur- 
face that  she  could  present  without  effort  against  any  attack. 


84  HOUSE-MATES 

Her  very  personality  had  in  it  something  of  the  charac- 
teristics of  the  porcelain  to  which  I  had  so  often  likened 
her  physical  beauty.  One  might  break  her  by  a  sudden 
blow,  but  she  was  no  longer  plastic.  Her  outline  was  set 
and  could  never  be  altered.  And  if  one  broke  her  nothing 
would  be  left — nothing  that  would  be  worth  keeping. 

"I'm  sorry,"  I  said  feebly.  "I  suppose  I  knew  that  I 
ought  to  be  working,  and  when  I  saw  that  you  had  some 
one  with  you  ...  It  wouldn't  have  been  any  fun  going  out 
with  Elsie  Burton.  .  .  ." 

She  held  her  advantage. 

"I  do  wish  sometimes  that  you  wouldn't  be  quite  so 
lackadaisical,"  she  said  coldly ;  and  I  saw  that  it  was  I  who 
would  presently  be  moulded  into  a  new  shape. 


VIII 

The  year  that  intervened  between  that  conversation  and 
the  death  of  my  mother  must  have  been  a  particularly  dreary 
one.  Looking  back  upon  it,  I  have  an  impression  of  my- 
self patiently  frowning  my  way  into  the  acceptance  of  a 
future  that  appeared,  even  then,  to  be  singularly  unin- 
spiring. I  can  recall  no  moments  of  inspiration  through- 
out those  long  months.  I  was  resigning  myself  to  the 
steady  contemplation  of  the  commonplace,  and  my  thoughts 
were  blurred  by  an  increasing  cloud  of  depression. 

All  the  incidents  of  that  time  are  associated  with  Gladys. 
Such  small  excitements  as  going  to  the  theatre,  or,  when 
Aunt  Agatha  was  well  enough,  an  afternoon  on  the  river, 
or  a  little  dinner  party  at  Ken  Lodge,  come  back  to  me 
now  as  connected  with  some  further  tightening  of  the  chain 
that  I  was  fitting  myself  to  wear.  Only  in  the  early  morn- 
ings was  I  ever  able  to  delude  myself  that  the  future  still 
held  some  enchanting  possibilities  for  me.  I  sometimes 
dreamed  then,  deliberately  reckless  of  the  chain;  dreams 
in  which  Gladys  had  no  place. 

I  have  dated  this  period  as  definitely  beginning  with  our 


GLADYS  85 

conversation  on  that  Sunday  morning,  and  I  think  I  am 
right  in  marking  that  talk  as  the  first  indication  of  a  change 
of  relationship  between  me  and  Gladys.  I  knew  then  that 
any  feeling  I  had  for  my  cousin  was  nothing  more  than 
admiration  of  her  physical  beauty;  and  after  I  had  seen 
her  gawky  attempts  to  play  tennis,  even  that  compensating 
excuse  for  our  engagement  was  denied  to  me.  I  could 
not  forget  that  she  was  only  graceful  by  acquired  habit.  It 
was  as  if  I  had  exposed  some  fine  piece  of  furniture  as  a 
clever  fraud.  By  accident  I  had  chipped  away  a  fragment 
of  veneer  and  had  seen  the  coarse  material  below;  even 
the  horrible  glue  that  served  to  maintain  the  deceit.  I 
tried  desperately  at  times  to  delude  myself  that  nothing 
was  altered,  that  the  appearance  was  no  less  beautiful  than 
before,  that  even  the  fraud  itself  was  brilliant  enough  to 
demand  my  admiration.  But  it  was  no  good.  The  sur- 
face remained,  the  grace  of  the  lines,  all  the  outward  evi- 
dences of  beauty;  but  I  could  not  forget  my  sight  of  the 
deal  and  the  glue;  and  I  saw  that,  as  I  had  carelessly  ex- 
posed that  foundation  once,  I  might  blunder  into  further 
experiments.  I  might  be  tempted  to  pick  again  at  some 
tempting  edge  of  what  I  knew  to  be  nothing  more  than 
veneer. 

Gladys's  change  of  altitude  was  not  less  inevitable  than 
my  own.  She  knew.  I  am  certain,  now,  that  she  knew 
all  I  had  guessed.  How  far  she  deceived  herself  I  can- 
not say.  She  would  have  found  a  hundred  reasons  for 
keeping  her  own  admiration.  Nevertheless,  I  believe  she 
grew  to  hate  me  during  that  next  year  of  our  engage- 
ment, and  she  may  have  held  me  to  my  promises  mainly 
to  support  her  own  pride.  If.  she  had  let  me  go,  taken 
the  initiative  and  thrown  me  over,  she  would  have  admit- 
ted the  fraud;  and  she  may  have  been  honest  enough  to 
dread  the  making  of  such  an  admission  to  herself.  And  yet 
I  am  not  sure.  I  cannot  pretend  to  understand  her  secret 
thoughts.  Indeed,  I  have  occasionally  been  driven  to 
the  conclusion  that  she  never  had  any  secret  thoughts ;  but 
that  in  some  positive,  instinctive  way  she  simply  persisted 


86  HOUSE-MATES 

because  she  was  subconsciously  aware  that  retreat  meant 
some  kind  of  self-revelation. 

Whatever  her  motives,  the  effect  of  them  was  displayed 
in  what  I  can  only  call  an  increasing  cruelty  to  me.  She 
no  longer  condescended  to  any  admiration  for  my  work 
or  my  opinions,  but  began  quite  openly  to  mould  me  that 
I  might  fit  the  destiny  of  her  invention.  She  had  our  future 
all  cut  and  dried,  and  she  did  not  disguise  the  fact  that 
she  meant  to  rule  me. 

I  remember,  for  example,  a  dinner-party  at  Ken  Lodge 
that  autumn,  and  the  public  attack  that  Gladys  made 
upon  me.  And  the  occasion  is  further  remarkable  inas- 
much as  that  was  the  first  time  I  saw  Morrison  Blake,  whom 
I  disliked  so  peculiarly  at  the  time  and  to  whom  I  had 
reason  later  for  being  so  uncommonly  grateful. 

He  was  a  man  of  nearly  fifty  then,  I  should  say ;  a  rather 
stout  man,  not  very  tall,  but  producing  an  effect  of  au- 
thority. He  wore  a  full  beard  and  moustache,  the  former 
cut  something  in  the  style  shown  in  the  Nineveh  reliefs, 
but  the  crisp  curl  of  the  brown  hair  was  not,  in  his  case, 
artificial.  His  pate  was  nearly  bald,  but  the  tufts  of  hair 
over  his  ears  and  along  the  nape  of  his  neck  suggested 
that  originally  his  hair  had  curled  tightly  all  over  his  head. 

I  had  heard  of  him  by  repute  as  the  greatest  living  ex- 
pert on  antique  furniture,  and  I  had  looked  forward  to 
meeting  him.  What  repelled  me  from  my  first  sight  of 
him  was  the  too  evident  delight  he  took  in  himself,  in  his 
appearance,  his  opinions,  and  everything  that  belonged  to 
him.  I  have  never  known  a  man  so  overpoweringly  con- 
ceited. He  was  a  great  talker,  too.  He  flowed  on  in  his 
rich  tenor,  giving  us  anecdote  after  anecdote  of  his  experi- 
ences as  an  expert  and  a  collector.  I  will  admit  that  the 
majority  of  his  stories  had  considerable  point  and  interest 
and  that  he  told  them  well,  but  he  never  for  one  instant 
attempted  to  disguise  the  important  part  that  he  himself 
had  played  in  the  revelation  of  a  fraud  or  the  swindling 
(I  called  it  swindling)  of  the  unhappy,  ignorant  possessor 
of  some  article  of  virtue. 


GLADYS  87 

My  uncle  and  aunt  were  very  attentive  to  him.  He  had 
been  a  client  of  my  uncles  for  some  years,  but  this  was 
the  first  time  they  had  been  able  to  persuade  him  to  dine 
with  them.  The  only  other  stranger  present  was  Lady 
Hoast,  the  widow  of  old  Sir  George  Hoast,  who  made  his 
money  in  leather ;  and  she  contributed  little  to  the  conversa- 
tion. She  was  a  very  tall,  stiff  woman  with  a  long,  thin 
nose  and  an  air  of  having  always  been  about  her  present 
age. 

Gladys  was  very  charming  to  Blake  throughout  the  in- 
terminable length  of  dinner.  She  listened  to  his  stories 
with  absorbed  attention  and  laughed  with  an  appearance  of 
abandon  that  was  splendidly  convincing.  After  about  the 
third  course,  Blake  was  obviously  telling  his  stories  more 
particularly  for  Gladys's  benefit,  although  his  other  listeners 
were  not  less  attentive  than  she  was.  Lady  Hoast  had  a 
queer,  silent  laugh  that  seemed  to  ripple  through  her,  be- 
ginning at  the  head  and  so  trembling  down  from  her  shoul- 
der to  invisibility.  I  imagined  it  passing  away  with  a  final 
tremor  of  her  feet.  There  were  only  the  six  of  us,  my 
mother  was  even  then  too  ill  to  come  out  at  night. 

It  was  in  the  drawing-room,  after  we  had  joined  the  three 
women,  that  Gladys  made  her  attack  upon  me. 

Blake  had  been  telling  a  story  about  a  piece  of  Queen 
Anne  silver,  and  no  doubt  the  mention  of  the  period  re- 
minded her  of  my  objections  to  the  architectural  style  be- 
loved of  Parkinson. 

"Do  you  admire  the  Queen  Anne  style,  Mr.  Blake?"  she 
asked,  and  I  guessed  at  once  what  was  coming. 

"In  silver,  certainly,  Miss  Williams,"  Blake  said,  and 
then,  waving  one  of  his  exquisite  white  hands,  he  went  on : 
"But  nearly  all  the  old  stuff  has  the  virtue  of  real  design 
and  feeling.  It's  only  the  abominable  things  they  make 
to-day,  the  defective  imitations,  or  poor,  fumbling  attempts 
at  originality;  it's  only  these  nineteenth  century  things  that 
I  unhesitatingly  condemn.  I've  always  been  catholic  in 
taste.  I  have  said  that  you  can  find  beauty  in  any  piece 
of  an  earlier  date  than  the  end  of  the  i8th  century,  if  you'll 


88  HOUSE-MATES 

take  the  trouble  to  look  for  it.  I  believe  that.  Real  Art 
died  with  the  French  Revolution." 

Gladys  looked  up  at  him,  demure  and  yet  ecstatic.  "Oh ! 
I  do  so  agree  with  you,"  she  said.  "I  have  been  trying 
hard,  lately,  to  convert  Mr.  Hornby.  He  is  an  architect, 
you  know,  and  so  obsessed  with  the  idea  that  the  only 
possible  style  is  this  'New  Art.'  " 

Blake  looked  at  me  as  if  he  had  for  the  first  time  be- 
come conscious  of  my  presence;  and  his  glance  pitied  my 
profound  ignorance  rather  than  my  wrong-headedness. 

"I  have  only  two  objections  to  your  'New  Art,'  Mr. 
Hornby,"  he  said.  "It  isn't  new,  and  it  isn't  Art."  He 
laughed  as  if  he  had  said  something  clever. 

Gladys  gave  me  no  time  to  reply,  even  if  I  had  had  any 
adequate  retort  to  Blake's  stale  witticism.  "I  was  sure 
you'd  think  that,"  she  said,  as  if  no  other  opinion  was  now 
possible.  "You  must  really  convert  Mr.  Hornby — he  is  so 
obstinate  about  his  theories." 

Blake  looked  a  trifle  bored.  "Oh!  these  theorists!"  he 
returned  with  one  of  his  fat  gestures.  "They'll  recover  their 
good  sense  if  you  give  'em  time — those  that  are  worth 
bothering  about.  The  others  can  go  mad  in  their  own 
way;  they  can't  do  any  harm."  He  was  so  superbly  confi- 
dent that  opposition  failed  to  make  him  angry.  He  looked 
down  on  me  and  my  like  with  good-humoured  contempt. 
He  was  rich,  he  was  clever,  he  was  handsome  in  his  cor- 
pulent, curly-haired  way,  and  above  all  he  was  treated  with 
the  respect  and  admiration  due  to  a  specialist  who  has  no 
near  rival.  To  him  the  struggling  Geddesses  and  Hornbys 
were  callow  youths  whose  opinions  were  not  worth  one 
instant's  consideration. 

Gladys  looked  at  me  with  a  kind  of  tender  commisera- 
tion. She  had  successfully  demonstrated  in  that  com- 
pany the  worth  of  my  taste  in  art. 

And  I,  poor,  drudging  creature  that  I  was,  exhibited  no 
outward  sign  of  my  resentment.  I  blushed  and  mumbled 
and  allowed  the  magnificent  Blake  to  roll  over  and  then 
forget  me  in  the  recountal  of  another  story  from  his  in- 


GLADYS  89 

terminable  list.  I  was  coiled  up  so  closely  within  my 
shell;  and  my  one  thought  was  to  reconcile  myself  to  that 
tight  enclosure.  I  hugged  the  thought  that  one  day  I,  too, 
might  be  rich  and  regarded  as  an  authority.  My  chief 
desire  just  then  was  to  stand  on  my  own  hearthrug,  sur- 
rounded with  the  furniture  of  my  own  taste,  and  to  exhibit, 
in  his  own  presence,  the  poverty  of  Morrison  Blake's  truck- 
ling to  the  antique.  I  was  hardly  aware  of  any  need  for 
inhibiting  that  desire.  I  had  my  model,  and  if  I  had 
any  dread  of  my  future  it  was  due  to  my  doubt  of  Gladys. 
It  is  not  well  to  start  a  collection  with  a  piece  that  one 
knows  to  be  fraudulent. 

But  I  dreamed  a  new  dream  as  I  took  my  tub  next 
morning — we  had  no  bath-room  in  the  little  house  in  the 
North  End  Road.  I  pictured  Blake  falling  in  love  with 
Gladys — I  put  it  that  way  because  I  had  no  doubt  of  her 
response ;  she  would  never  be  able  to  resist  the  glory  of 
such  a  marriage.  And  for  a  moment  or  two  the  dream 
gave  me  relief.  I  looked  into  an  unfurnished  future  that 
expanded  into  vague  enchanting  depths  without  any  kind  of 
boundary.  I  had  come  near  to  the  edge  of  a  vision  when 
I  found  myself  facing  the  dreary  stairs  of  the  office  in 
Lincoln's  Inn. 

April  was  coming  in  and  in  the  Gardens  the  pressure 
of  young  life  was  thrusting  its  way  to  freedom.  I  would 
have  run  away  that  morning  if  it  had  not  been  for  my 
mother's  need  of  me.  I  knew  that  she  was  failing  rapidly 
and  I  could  not  leave  her  then. 


IX 

I  find  it  impossible  even  after  this  length  of  time  to  write 
about  my  mother's  last  illness.  I  cannot  explain  my  reluc- 
tance. I  propose  presently  to  write  of  something  much 
nearer  to  the  heart  of  my  life  than  the  emotions  I  experi- 
enced in  the  long  three  months  that  intervened  between 
our  knowledge  that  her  death  was  inevitable  and  the  last 


90  HOUSE-MATES 

gradual  slipping  through  unconsciousness  to  separation. 
But  that  slow  parting  had  a  quality  that  I  cannot  define 
in  words,  and  I  prefer  to  leave  the  description  unattempted. 
She  and  I  came  to  understand  one  another  very  well  before 
her  recognition  of  all  material  life  ultimately  failed,  some 
ten  days  before  the  obstinate  vital  functions  ceased  from  the 
hopeless  effort  to  maintain  the  form  of  her  body.  She  was 
curiously  less  religious  during  those  last  two  months.  Some 
certainty  had  come  to  her  and  she  no  longer  grasped  at  the 
straw  of  written  words.  Her  Bible  lay  always  on  the  table 
by  her  bed,  but  I  know  that  she  seldom  opened  it.  We, 
spoke  little  in  that  time.  Her  certainty  must  have  been 
so  near  that  she  assumed  my  understanding  of  her  faith. 
And,  indeed,  I  did  understand.  There  were  moments  when 
I  was  inclined  to  envy  my  mother  for  the  speeding  of  her 
destiny. 

And  the  effect  of  her  willing  resignation  to  a  change  of 
which  she  knew  neither  the  manner  nor  the  result  has  re- 
mained with  me  till  now,  and  will  remain  with  me  always. 
After  my  mother  died  I  was  plunged  into  the  turmoil  of 
the  world  as  I  had  never  been  plunged  before.  I  have  be- 
come involved  in  what  would  be  described  as  material  loves, 
interests  and  anxieties.  I  am  at  this  moment  intensely  con- 
cerned with  the  common  movement  and  exigencies  of  life. 
But  I  know  that  when  the  warning  comes  to  me  I  shall 
receive  it  without  fear  or  anxiety.  I  shall  have  no  con- 
cern, then,  with  the  casting  of  my  moral  account  with  God. 
A  certainty  will  visit  me  as  it  visited  her;  and  I  shall  not, 
reach  out  for  the  show  of  repentance  nor  concern  myself 
with  any  interpretation  of  old  doctrine.  That  is  what  my 
mother's  faith  meant  to  me  during  her  last  illness;  and 
that  is  the  faith  I  have  carried  since  she  died.  I  have 
never  tried  to  know  the  Unknowable,  I  believe  in  Him,  and 
I  am  content. 


After  the  funeral  I  had  an  interview  with  my  uncle, 
and  he  put  my  affairs  before  me  in  the  clearest  language. 


GLADYS  91 

My  capital  amounted  to  just  under  £200  and  the  furniture  of 
our  little  house  in  the  North  End  Road.  My  mother  had 
been  a,  yearly  tenant  of  the  house  and  the  agreement  had 
only  another  fortnight  to  run.  No  notice  had  been  given 
of  our  intention  to  leave  the  place,  but  my  uncle  had  seen 
the  landlord  who  was  willing  to  waive  that  formality  on 
condition  that  I  moved  my  furniture  as  soon  as  possible. 
My  position  was  clear  enough.  All  that  remained  was  for 
me  to  decide  what  I  proposed  to  do. 

That  decision  may  appear  an  easy  one,  but  I  was  ab- 
surdly perplexed  by  it.  I  was  still  a  schoolboy  in  the  man- 
agement of  affairs.  Until  then  everything  had  been  done 
for  me;  I  had  never  even  lived  in  rooms;  the  whole  busi- 
ness of  deciding  where  to  live  seemed  to  me  full  of  difficulty 
and  anxiety. 

And  I  was  expecting  my  uncle  to  make  some  offer  to 
provide  for  me.  I  had  not  seriously  considered  the  idea 
of  living  on  the  £3  a  week  I  earned  at  Heaton  &  Baxter's. 
I  rather  anticipated  the  suggestion  that  I  should,  now,  marry 
Gladys  with  as  little  delay  as  possible ;  but  I  was  confi- 
dent that,  in  any  case,  my  uncle  would  allow  me  an  income. 
I  sat  in  the  little  L  shaped  room  off  the  hall,  that  he  used 
as  a  study,  and  waited  for  the  proposition  to  come. 

Uncle  David  looked  down  at  the  poor  little  collection 
of  papers  that  represented  all  my  personal  property,  rolled 
out  the  drum  of  his  sonorous  cough  and  winked  prodi- 
giously. 

"Er — hrum-rum-rum,"  he  began,  "I  should  advise  unfur- 
nished rooms  as  being  cheaper  and — hum,  hum — likely  to 
give  you  the  best  investment  for  your  furniture." 

"For  a  time,  at  least,"  I  said,  and  then  by  way  of  show- 
ing that  I  was  not  quite  such  an  idiot  as  my  earlier  silence 
had  made  me  appear  I  went  on :  "Some  of  it  might  be  sold, 
I  think.  There  wouldn't  be  enough  for  an  auction;  per- 
haps .  .  ." 

"I  will  manage  that  for  you,"  Uncle  David  rumbled, 
winking  solemnly  at  my  mother's  will. 

I  waited  for  a  moment  and,  as  the  offer  still  hung  fire, 


92  HOUSE-MATES 

I  tried  the  broadest  hint  I  dared  to  get  the  affair  settled. 

"Of  course,  it  will  only  be  necessary  to  take  rooms  for 
a  time,"  I  said  firmly.  "Meanwhile  I  might  be  looking  about 
for  a  house  for  Gladys  and  myself." 

Uncle  David's  tic  became  more  violent  than  I  had  ever 
seen  it.  He  had  to  put  his  hand  up  to  his  face  and  cough 
himself  quiet  before  he  could  answer  me. 

"Yes,  yes,"  he  said.  "But  I  made  it  clear — er-rhum— 
from  the  beginning — that  I  expect  you  to  be  making  a  decent 
income — before  you  marry  Gladys." 

"That  job  of  Mr.  Parkinson's  is  actually  started  at  last," 
I  put  in,  but  my  uncle  ignored  the  interruption  and 
continued : 

"I  should  expect  you  to  be  making  an  income  of — of  at 
least  £800  a  year.  When  you  see  your  way  to  that  I — I 
should  be  prepared  to  make  a — a — a  suitable  settlement  for 
Gladys.  Quite  against  my  principles  to — to — to  encourage 
you  in  the  belief  that  work  is  unnecessary." 

"Oh!  well,  of  course,"  I  said.  I  was  annoyed  by  what 
I  regarded  as  another  exhibition  of  my  uncle's  meanness. 
"The  only  point  is  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  get  together 
a  private  practice  when  you're  working  in  another  man's 
office.  If  I  could  make  a  start  .  .  ." 

"You've  got  two  hundred  pounds,"  my  uncle  said  with 
a  portentous  wink. 

"I  suppose  that  would  be  enough  to  start  on?"  I  said  in 
the  tone  of  one  making  mental  calculations. 

"And  the  commission  on  Parkinson's  house  coming  to 
you?"  Uncle  David  continued. 

''About  £180  spread  over  fifteen  months  or  so,"  I  supplied. 

"I  began  with  less,"  was  my  uncle's  only  comment. 

I  got  up  with  an  air  of  having  the  business  settled.  "Well, 
then,  I  had  better  see  about  getting  an  office,"  I  said. 

My  uncle  exchanged  confidences  with  the  papers  in  front 
of  him.  "I  would  advise  you,"  he  said,  "to— to— to  limit 
your  ideas  of  luxury  for  the  time  being.  Two  rooms  would 
be— er-rhum,  hum— sufficient.  In  a  cheap  neighbourhood." 

That  idea  had  never  presented  itself  to  my  inmost  mind. 


GLADYS  93 

An  office  was  an  office  to  me.  When  Geddes  and  Horton- 
Smith  had  left  Lincoln's  Inn  they  had  both  plunged,  the 
former  with  a  couple  of  rooms  in  King  Street,  Cheapside, 
the  latter  into  a  suite  of  chambers  in  Verulam  Buildings, 
Grays  Inn. 

"Do  you  mean  that  I  should  have  an  office  and  sitting- 
room  combined?"  I  asked. 

"I  see  no  reason  against  it,"  my  uncle  said. 

"Very  well,  then.    That's  settled,"  I  returned  petulantly. 

"I  will  manage  your  affairs  for  you,"  my  uncle  added, 
as  I  was  at  the  door.  "The  proving  of  the  will  will  be 
a  very  simple  affair,  but  I  can  let  you  have  a  little  ready 
money  at  once  if  you  require  it." 

"Oh!  that's  all  right.  Don't  bother,"  I  said,  as  I  went 
out.  .  .  . 

I  saw  Gladys  in  the  garden 'and  joined  her  on  the  back 
lawn.  My  temper  was  still  hot  and  I  meant,  for  once,  to 
assert  myself. 

"I've  been  talking  to  Uncle  David,"  I  announced,  as  I 
sat  down  beside  Gladys  on  the  garden  seat.  "I've  got  two 
hundred  pounds  and  the  prospect  of  another  one  hundred 
and  eighty  from  Parkinson ;  and  Uncle  David  advises  me  to 
set  up  in  private  practice  with  two  rooms  in  Bloomsbury  or 
somewhere !" 

Gladys  looked  at  me  in  her  composed,  thoughtful  way, 
and  then  said: 

"Well?  Why  not?  You  must  make  a  beginning  some- 
how, I  suppose?" 

"I'm  perfectly  ready  to  make  a  beginning,"  I  said,  and 
found  myself  quite  unable  to  state  my  grievance.  I  was 
very  conscious  that  I  had  been  hardly  used,  but  I  saw  no 
way  of  suggesting  to  Gladys  that  her  father  was,  in  the 
phrase  of  my  thought,  "a  mean,  old  skunk." 

"Why  are  you  in  such  a  temper  about  it,  then  ?"  she  asked. 

I  fell  back  on  the  obvious,  which  was  none  the  less  ob- 
vious because  it  was  certainly  not  the  true  reason  for  my 
discontent. 

"I  thought  we  might  be  married  fairly  soon,  now,"  I  said, 


94  HOUSE-MATES 

"but  Uncle  David  says  he  won't  hear  of  it  till  I'm  making, 
£800  a  year.  And  it's  all  jolly  fine,"  I  went  on,  working 
myself  up  and  trying  to  avoid  the  necessity  for  becoming 
amorous  or  sentimental,  "but,  starting  in  two  poky  little 
rooms  like  that,  it  won't  be  so  easy  to  work  up  a  practice. 
People  haven't  much  confidence  in  a  chap  who  hasn't  even 
got  an  office  of  his  own." 

"Do  you  want  father  to  keep  you?"  Gladys  asked  with 
that  faint,  reproving  pucker  of  her  forehead  I  knew  so 
well. 

"Rather  not,"  I  replied,  and  tried  to  turn  the  tables  on 
her  by  adding:  "Are  you  content  to  wait  for  ten  years 
before  we  can  be  married  ?" 

She  looked  down  at  the  toe  of  her  slipper,  which  was 
thickly  embroidered  with  little  golden  beads,  that  shone  in 
the  warm  September  sunlight.  "No,  I'm  not,"  she  said, 
and  I  had  no  sort  of  suspicion  that  she  was  procrastinating, 
keeping  me  in  hand  until  such  time  as  she  was  sure  of  her 
game. 

"Well,  then !"  I  remarked. 

She  looked  up  at  me  with  a  sudden  kindness,  as  if  she 
were,  after  all,  genuinely  sorry  for  my  distress. 

"It  will  be  all  right,  old  boy,"  she  said.  "We  must  wait 
a  month  or  two — and  see.  Leave  it  to  me." 

And  I  immediately  took  heart,  so  far  as  my  financial 
prospects  were  concerned,  and  at  the  same  moment  relapsed 
into  the  old  depression  at  the  thought  of  what  seemed  again 
to  be  my  inevitable  future.  I  had  not  been  aware  until 
then  that  underneath  my  petulance  and  disappointment  there 
had  been  some  glimmer  of  relief. 


XI 

I  have  tried  to  be  honest  in  describing  the  kind  of  young 
man  I  was  when  I  left  Hampstead  and  the  shelter  of  my 
mother's  supervision.  I  was  a  fair  specimen  of  a  cer- 
tain type,  a  type  that  exhibits  the  usual  characteristics  of 


GLADYS  95 

a  public  school  boy.  None  of  the  men  I  knew  during  that 
period  would  have  described  me  as  a  mollycoddle.  I  had 
the  usual  accomplishments,  I  was  pretty  good  at  my  pro- 
fession, I  was  not  a  prig.  Any  of  my  colleagues  in  Lin- 
coln's Inn  would  have  described  me  as  "a  good  chap."  And 
yet  when  I  look  back,  now,  on  the  way  in  which  I  faced  life 
after  my  mother  died,  it  seems  to  me  that  mollycoddle  and 
prig  are  the  only  words  that  fit  me. 

I  had  so  little  independence  of  mind.  I  should  have 
been  content  to  accept  an  allowance  from  my  uncle  with- 
out a  single  qualm.  Worse  still,  I  was  ready  to  marry 
Gladys  for  the  sake  of  an  assured  future.  If  I  sought  any 
excuse  for  that  dishonesty,  it  must  have  been  found  in  my 
belief  that  I  had  a  future  as  an  architect.  I  could  not  have 
disguised  from  myself  the  fact  that  I  proposed  to  marry 
Gladys  for  the  sake  of  an  income  and  a  position;  but  I 
forgot  to  examine  that  aspect  of  my  intentions  in  my  con- 
centration on  the  plan  of  life  that  appeared  then  as  my  only 
possible  ambition. 

I  had  chosen  my  niche,  or  it  had  been  chosen  for  me, 
and  I  looked  for  nothing  more.  I  had  a  profession  and 
I  meant  to  become  a  professional  man.  The  things  I  de- 
sired were  a  little  fame,  a  reasonable  income,  and  a  circle 
of  friends  who  thought  in  much  the  same  way  as  I  did. 
These  were  the  factors  which  constituted  success.  Any  one 
of  my  acquaintances  would  have  agreed  in  that  definition. 
I  thought  of  the  world  as  a  place  divided  into  a  thousand 
compartments  that  had  a  definite  relation  one  to  the  other; 
and  the  compartment  that  chiefly  interested  me  was  that 
in  which  I  hoped  to  occupy  an  honourable  place.  In  that 
world  of  my  imagination  everything  was  relatively  settled 
and  accounted  for.  Science  provided  one  with  occasional 
exciting  discoveries  ;  politics  with  material  for  argument ;  art 
with  beauty;  and  religion  with  a  final  refuge  from  all  per- 
plexity. It  was,  in  fact,  a  nice,  accommodating  shop  of  a 
world,  in  which  everything  had  its  appointed  place ;  and 
if  you  had  money  enough  all  the  doors  of  the  shop  were 
open  to  you.  I  thought  that  you  could,  indeed,  buy  the 


96  HOUSE-MATES 

appearance  of  respect  and  esteem  there,  just  as  you  can  in  an 
ordinary  shop. 

And  when  I  left  Hampstead  to  take  two  rooms  in  Blooms- 
bury,  I  had  no  intuition  that  any  real  change  was  coming 
into  my  life.  I  did  not  go  out  of  my  old  world,  joyfully,  to 
seek  adventure;  but  rather  with  a  sense  of  depression.  I 
believed  that  Gladys  would  persuade  her  father  to  make  her 
such  an  allowance  as  would  permit  us  to  be  married.  I 
saw  with  perfect  distinctness  a  future  in  which  my  chief 
annoyance  would  be  the  irk  of  my  marital  relations.  I 
dreaded  a  conflict  of  wills  between  Gladys  and  myself,  and 
the  bone  of  our  contentions  would  be,  I  believed,  the  prin- 
ciple of  my  aesthetic. 

More  particularly  I  dreaded  the  influence  of  Morrison 
Blake.  I  had  forgotten  my  dream  of  marrying  him  to 
Gladys;  he  had  come  again  more  than  once  to  Ken  Lodge, 
but  I  had  perceived  no  sign  of  any  amorous  intention  on 
his  part.  I  thought  that  he  was  too  deeply  in  love  with 
himself  and  his  celebrity  to  bother  about  marriage.  I  had 
more  than  once  heard  him  congratulate  himself  on  his 
celibacy.  And  just  at  that  time  I  should  certainly  have 
regarded  Gladys's  unfaithfulness  to  me  as  a  great  calamity. 
She  stood  between  me  and  poverty.  I  knew,  now,  that  my 
uncle  would  do  nothing  for  me,  unless  his  daughter's  hap- 
piness was  involved. 

But  Morrison  Blake's  intimacy  with  the  family  was  a 
threat  to  my  future  happiness.  The  Williams  all  believed 
in  him.  He  was  in  my  compartment  and  I  was  not  strong 
enough  to  assert  my  aesthetic  against  his.  When  Gladys  and 
I  were  married  she  would,  I  believed,  continually  urge  me 
to  change  my  style  in  design ;  or,  at  least,  to  supple  myself— 
as  I  had  already  done  in  Parkinson's  case — to  the  taste  of 
my  client.  And  some  little  spark  of  individuality  within  me 
was  resenting  that  interference.  The  walls  of  my  compart- 
ment were  being  raised  and  strengthened;  and,  little  as 
I  guessed  it  at  the  time,  my  unknown  self  was  uneasily 
struggling  within  its  hardening  shell.  .  .  . 

Such  was  the  egg,  labelled  Wilfred  Hornby,  who  after 


GLADYS  97 

one  or  two  other  tentative  and  forbidding  experiments, 
knocked  at  the  door  of  73  Keppel  Street  on  the  23rd  of 
September,  1905. 

It  was  a  wet  Saturday  afternoon,  and  I  was  nervously 
irritable. 


BOOK  TWO 
THE  INCUBATOR 


BOOK  TWO:  THE  INCUBATOR 

IV 
ON  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 


A  MAN  opened  the  door  to  me — a  broad-shouldered 
squat  little  man  with  a  bullet  head.  He  was  in  his 
shirt-sleeves,  but  he  did  not  look  like  a  servant.  He  was 
wearing  what  appeared  to  be  an  authentic  gold  watch  chain 
across  the  width  of  his  dirty  but  rather  ostentatious  waist- 
coat. He  had  opened  the  door  wide  and  stood  square  across 
the  threshold  looking  at  me  with  a  suspicion  that  was  half- 
defiant. 

"Vat  ees  your  beesness?"  he  asked. 

"I  see  that  there  are  some  unfurnished  apartments  to  let 
here,"  I  said,  pointing  to  the  card  propped  on  the  meeting- 
rail  of  the  ground  floor  window. 

The  little  man  resisted  the  temptation  to  follow  the  in- 
dication of  my  hand  and  continued  to  stare  at  me.  I 
noticed  that  his  left  eye  had  a  tendency  to  look  absently 
over  my  shoulder  while  its  fellow  kept  watch. 

"Ach !  Zat  is  so,"  he  agreed,  making  no  attempt  to  move. 

"I'm  looking  for  two  unfurnished  rooms,"  I  returned, 
"but  if  you  don't  want  to  let  yours  ..."  I  was  turning 
away  when  he  stepped  back  into  the  hall  and  said : 

"Come  een.    I  vill  show  zem  to  you." 

I  hesitated.  I  was  annoyed  by  his  manner,  and  had  a 
foolish  wish  to  take  some  sort  of  revenge  upon  him.  "Oh ! 

101 


102  HOUSE-MATES 

It  doesn't  matter  in  the  least,"  I  said,  shrugging  my 
shoulders. 

The  little  man's  answering  shrug  showed  me  how  feeble 
a  thing  mine  had  been. 

"Zat  ees  as  you  like,  of  course,"  he  said.  "You  reeng 
and  go  away.  Eet  happen  so  more  times  zan  I  can  say." 

"Are  they  on  the  ground  floor?"  I  asked. 

"Zey  are  on  the  groundt  floor,"  he  said. 

"I'm  afraid  they  might  be  rather  dark,"  I  said.  "I  should 
want  to  use  one  as  a  drawing  office." 

"So  ?    An  offeece  ?    You  are  zen  an  architect,  perhaps  ?" 

When  I  had  admitted  that  I  was  an  architect,  the  little 
man  finally  dropped  his  last  air  of  suspicion,  and  I  no- 
ticed that  his  left  eye  steadied  itself  and  looked  at  me  with 
a  strict  attention  to  business.  "Ach,  come  and  see  ze 
apartment,"  he  urged  me.  "Zey  are  very  fine  apartment 
and  cheap.  You  would  have  a  sign  on  the  post,  yes  ?" 

"Have  a  what?"  I  asked. 

He  smiled  at  my  dulness,  came  forward  and  smacked  the 
door  frame  in  a  friendly  way.  "A  sign  of  your  name  and 
profession,"  he  said.  "In  brass,  yes?"  And  he  indicated 
an  oblong  with  a  gesture  of  both  hands. 

"Oh!  a  plate?  Yes,  I  suppose  I  should  have  a  plate  on 
the  door.  Do  you  object  to  that?"  I  asked. 

"No,  no,"  he  assured  me  with  considerable  vigour.  "I 
desire  a  sign  on  the  door.  Eet  look  very  well,  zat.  In 
brass,  yes  ?" 

He  was  ecstatic  over  the  beauty  of  the  rooms  and,  in- 
deed, he  had  some  excuse.  No.  73  was  one  of  the  older 
houses  that  went  with  the  others  when  Keppel  Street  was 
demolished,  but  it  had  a  claim  to  consideration.  It  might 
very  well  have  come  within  the  recognition  of  Blake  as 
having  been  designed  and  built  slightly  previous  to  the 
French  Revolution.  The  window  was  rather  good.  It  was 
in  two  lights  with  a  heavy  architrave  and  the  upper  sashes 
were  divided  with  heavy  sash-bars  into  quite  decently  pro- 
portioned oblongs.  The  cornice  was  good,  too,  in  that  style, 
and  its  heaviness  was  in  keeping  with  the  height  of  the 


ON  THE  GROUND  FLOOR  103 

room;  but  what  chiefly  interested  me  was  a  great  semi- 
circular niche  in  the  wall  facing  the  window.  This  recess 
was  about  twelve  feet  wide  and  six  deep,  framed  with 
squat,  Ionic  pilasters  that  carried  the  bold  mouldings  of  the 
arch.  It  was  all  a  plaster  sham,  of  course,  and  beneath  con- 
tempt as  art  from  my  point  of  view ;  but  I  could  not  deny 
that  it  was  effective  as  decoration.  The  mantelpiece  was 
later,  and  too  small  for  the  general  scale  of  the  room;  but 
the  door  was  original  with  solid  bolection  moulded  panels 
and  brass  furniture.  The  place  looked  clean,  and  its  bare- 
ness was  oddly  mitigated  by  two  vases  and  a  large  clock,  in 
soapstone,  conventionally  arranged  on  the  mantelpiece.  The 
vases  were  copies  of  an  Etruscan  model  and  the  clock  sim- 
ple enough  in  design  to  pass  muster.  Also  it  was  going 
and  set  to  the  right  time. 

"Those  are  not  included,  of  course,"  I  said,  pointing  to 
the  mantelpiece. 

The  little  man  put  his  head  on  one  side,  and  shrugged 
his  right  shoulder.  "Zat  ees  as  you  vill,"  he  said.  "I  can 
move  zem  or  not  move  zem,  as  you  like.  Zey  are  very  fine 
apartment.  You  take  zem,  yes?" 

I  rather  thought  that  I  should  take  them.  The  bedroom 
was  more  commonplace,  but  that  did  not  matter.  I  had 
taken  a  liking  to  the  front  room. 

"What  about  re-papering?"  I  asked.  The  sitting-room 
paper  was  beastly — pale  pink  flowers  on  a  faded  yellow 
ground. 

"Ah!  Zat!"  he  said,  and  I  saw  the  pursing  of  his  red 
mouth  through  the  thicket  of  his  moustache  and  beard.  "No, 
no !"  he  went  on.  "I  cannot  move  the  papers." 

"But  you  wouldn't  mind  my  doing  it  ?"  I  asked. 

"You  not  like  ze  paper?"  he  said.  "It  fade  itself."  And 
he  rubbed  it  thoughtfully  with  a  broad  and  dirty  thumb. 
"Vat  paper  you  like?"  he  asked. 

There  was  a  picture  rail  about  nine  feet  from  the 
ground,  a  poor,  Victorian  thing  as  I  guessed,  but  fortu- 
nately in  the  right  place,  not  too  near  the  cornice.  "I 


104  HOUSE-MATES 

should  like  a  brown  paper  with  no  pattern,"  I  said.  "Not 
too  dark ;  and  I  should  distemper  the  frieze  dead  white." 

The  little  man  nodded.  "Very  nice,"  he  said.  "You  are 
an  artist.  I  see  zat,  and  you  like  ze  apartment;  but,  no,  I 
could  not  afford  ze  new  papers.  It  ees  not  possible.  I  am 
unhappy  to  lose  you,  you  are  an  artist,  and  zere  is  also  ze 
sign  on  the  post,  but  I  have  not  ze  house  now  for  so  long. 
For  one  year  more  only  I  have  ze  house,  now.  Ze  lees 
give  himself  up." 

I  did  not  believe  that  I  should  want  the  rooms  for  so 
long  as  that.  I  looked  upon  this  plan  as  merely  a  tempo- 
rary expedient  until  Gladys  and  I  were  married,  but  I  felt 
that  I  could  not  ask  Geddes  and  Horton-Smith  to  see  me 
there  unless  my  ideas  of  decoration  were  carried  out.  I 
have  no  doubt,  now,  that  my  little  landlord  would  have 
done  anything  I  had  asked  him.  He  was  merely  bargain- 
ing, preparing  the  way  by  his  reluctance  for  an  increased 
rent.  But  I  was  as  innocent  a  bird  as  ever  set  out  to  engage 
in  business  of  that  kind  and  I  accepted  his  statement  as 
final. 

"Well,  look  here,"  I  said.  "I  think  I'll  take  these  rooms 
and  do  the  decoration  myself.  But  what  about  the  rent? 
I  can't  afford  very  much." 

The  little  man  again  congratulated  me  fervently  on  my 
artistic  abilities  before  he  said:  "Ze  rent  is  nussing.  As 
I  tell  you,  ze  lees  run  away  and  I  take  nussing  to  prefer 
a  lodger."  (I  never  knew  such  a  man  to  leap  at  what  he 
supposed  to  be  an  English  idiom.)  "Ze  rent  ?"  He  shrugged 
his  ^shoulders  again  and  made  a  gesture  of  immense  resig- 
nation with  his  hands.  "I  take  one  pound  each  veek,"  he 
concluded  with  the  despairing  air  of  a  man  who  accepts  the 
awful  inevitable. 

"Does  that  include  attendance?"  I  asked.  I  had  expected 
him  to  ask  more. 

"Viz  attendance,"  he  admitted  gloomily,  as  one  who  had 
been  condemned  and  no  longer  cared  to  discuss  the  details 
of  his  fate. 

"Oh!  and  I  say,  is  there  a  bathroom?"  I  added. 


ON  THE  GROUND  FLOOR  105 

"Zere  ees  a  barze,  you  find  heem  on  the  entresol,"  he 
said  dejectedly. 

He  had,  however,  recovered  his  hope  in  life  by  the  time 
I  had  paid  a  deposit  of  a  week's  rent;  he  gave  me  a  card 
with  his  name,  Karl  Pferdminger,  engraved  on  it  in  flourish- 
ing italics. 

As  we  were  in  the  passage-hall  a  woman  came  down- 
stairs, nodded  to  my  future  landlord,  and  stared  enquiringly 
at  me  as  she  passed.  She  was  young  and  distinctly  good- 
looking  in  a  smart,  rather  highly-coloured  style,  and  I 
looked  after  her  as  she  went  out. 

When  I  turned  my  head  I  found  that  Pferdminger  was 
regarding  me  with  a  hesitating  smile — I  have  seen  the  same 
kind  of  a  smile  on  a  would-be  propitiatory  dog — and  his  left 
eye  was  again  absentmindedly  forgetful  of  its  partner's 
business. 

"She  live  here,"  he  said.  "Mees  Viting.  She  ees  an 
actress." 

I  nodded  carelessly.  I  had  no  intention  of  becoming  in- 
volved with  the  other  tenants  of  No.  73  Keppel  Street. 
"Are  there  many  other  lodgers?"  I  asked. 

"Zere  ees  some  ozzers,"  he  said.    "Gentilmen,  also." 

His  last  word  to  me  was  a  reminder  about  the  "sign  on 
the  post." 

ii 

I  made  the  announcement  of  my  success  publicly,  at  din- 
ner, the  next  day.  I  described  my  future  sitting-room- 
orfice  in  detail.  I  was  warm  with  the  pride  of  new  own- 
ership; and  I  had  a  cowardly  hope  that  I  might  propitiate 
Gladys  by  praising  a  piece  of  Georgian  architecture.  I  was 
conscious  of  doing  something  broad-minded  and  generous. 

Gladys  responded  graciously,  but  my  uncle  had  one  or 
two  questions  to  put.  The  first  one  was  as  to  the  rent, 
and  when  I  told  him  that  I  was  to  pay  twenty  shillings  a 
week  for  two  unfurnished  rooms,  he  shook  his  head.  "I 
presume  they  are  in  one  of  the  Squares?"  he  asked. 


106  HOUSE-MATES 

I  had  not  mentioned  the  name  of  the  street.  I  had  pre- 
ferred the  longer  designation  of  Bloomsbury  which  had  the 
air  of  being  a  fitting  address  for  a  young  architect.  But 
my  temper  rose  at  my  uncle's  tone  of  reproof.  Since  that 
business  interview  of  ours  in  his  study  I  resented  his  inter- 
ference with  my  affairs. 

"No!  they  aren't,"  I  said.    "They're  in  Keppel  Street." 

My  uncle  looked  down  at  his  plate  and  winked  profoundly. 
"Very  risky,"  he  commented.  "Did  you  make  sure  that 
it  was  a  respectable  house?" 

I  blushed.  All  the  enigmas  of  Pferdminger's  behaviour; 
his  suspicion1  of  me  at  my  first  appearance,  his  relief  to 
find  that  I  was  a  professional  man,  his  anxiety  to  have 
a  brass  plate  on  the  door,  all  these  things  and  the  oddities 
of  his  manner  were  instantly  explained.  In  my  innocence 
I  had  looked  no  farther  than  the  fact  of  his  nationality  for 
any  solution  of  his  queerness,  but  at  Uncle  David's  sug- 
gestion I  knew  beyond  all  doubt  that  No.  73  Keppel  Street 
was  not  a  respectable  house. 

"Why  shouldn't  it  be?"  was  all  the  defence  I  found. 

"That  street  has  a  very  bad  name,"  my  uncle  said.  "Two 
houses  there  have  been  raided  within  the  past  few  months." 

"Oh!  Wilfred,  do  be  careful  where  you  go,"  Gladys  put 
in;  and  I  believe  it  was  her  speech  rather  than  my  uncle's 
that  put  my  back  up. 

"Of 'course,"  I  said.  "The  place  looked  perfectly  all 
right,  but- 1  shall  make  enquires  before  I  definitely  move 
in." 

"It  would  be  advisable,"  my  uncle  said  gravely,  and  the 
subject  was  dropped  for  the  time.  Gladys,  however,  re- 
verted to  it  later  in  the  afternoon,  and  took  it  upon  herself 
to  reprimand  me  for  my  carelessness.  "You  are  so  slack 
about  some  things,"  was  one  of  her  remarks  and  it  might 
have  stood  for  the  text  of  her  sermon. 

I  endured  her  fault-finding  with  exemplary  patience.  I 
was  wondering  what  she  would  say  if  I  suddenly  confessed 
my  misdemeanours  with  Nellie  Roberts.  I  was  hardening 
myself  against  reproof  just  then,  and  one  effect  of  that 


ON  THE  GROUND  FLOOR  107 

resolve  to  endure  was  an  alteration  of  my  scale  of  social 
values.  There  had  been  a  time  when  the  thought  of  Nellie 
Roberts  had  seemed  a  gross  outrage  on  the  purity  of  Ken 
Lodge ;  but  that  afternoon  I  was  inclined  to  find  excuses,  if 
not  virtues,  in  my  old-  sins.  Gladys  was  teaching  me  to 
resent  the  formal  disciplines  of  society.  Like  many  women 
she  had  a  strong  vein  of  the  schoolmistress  in  her. 

And  some  instinctive  reaction  against  the  flat  certainty 
of  her  social  dogmas  was  undoubtedly  working  in  me  when 
I  went  down  to  Keppel  Street  after  tea  the  same  day — to 
make  those  further  enquiries  I  had  promised. 

Pferdminger  was  not  there  and  the  door  was  opened 
by  his  wife,  a  tall,  thin,  despairing  woman,  who  evidently 
spoke  from  the  book  of  her  husband's  instructions. 

"Oh!  no!"  she  said — it  appeared  that  she  was  English — 
"we  never  take  any  one  without  making  sure.  We  have 
a  Miss  Whiting  on  the  first  floor — over  you,  she  is — an 
actress,  but  most  respectable." 

"Oh!  that's  all  right,  then,"  I  returned. 

"Perfectly  respectable  we've  always  been,"  Mrs.  Pferd- 
minger repeated  without  the  least  conviction  or  fervour,  and 
added,  "My  husband  told  you  we've  only  got  the  house 
for  another  year?"  There  was  an  accent  of  dull  relief 
in  her  voice  as  she  asked  the  question,  that  settled  any  last 
doubt  I  might  still  have  had. 

But  I  was  determined  to  move  into  the  house,  neverthe- 
less. I  was  even  a  little  elated.  I  was  not  sure  that  I  had 
not  some  wild  idea  of  making  the  most  of  what  I  believed 
to  be  the  short  remaining  period  of  my  liberty.  I  wondered 
if  "the  Viting,"  as  I  called  her  to  myself,  was  indeed  in 
any  kind  of  way  connected  with  the  stage.  I  rather  hoped 
that  she  might  be.  The  stage  gave  a  flavour  of  romance. 
I  had  never  spoken  to  an  actress. 

in 

I  moved  into  my  new  rooms  the  following  Monday  week. 
After  my  preliminary  instructions,  I  left  everything  to 


108  HOUSE-MATES 

a  man  I  knew  in  Berners  Street.  He  was  the  head  of  a 
firm  of  decorators  with  which  Heaton  &  Baxter  had  often 
done  business;  and  I  could  trust  him  to  do  things  decently. 
He  wanted  me  to  have  a  heavier  picture  rail  put  in  and 
one  or  two  other  things,  but  I  resisted  those  temptations. 
I  had  the  excuse  that  the  sitting-room  was  to  be  my  office, 
and  ought  to  represent  my  taste  in  decoration,  but  I  had 
to  buy  a  lot  of  new  furniture  and  it  seemed  foolish  to 
spend  money  on  a  place  that  was  probably  coming  down 
in  a  year's  time.  I  was  sorry  about  the  picture-rail.  Be- 
sides being  too  light  for  the  style  of  the  room,  it  cut  very 
awkwardly  into  the  moulding  of  the  arch  that  enclosed  the 
recess. 

I  invited  Geddes  and  Horton-Smith  to  come  round  on  the 
Thursday  after  I  had  moved  in,  and  they  both  agreed  that 
the  front  room  was  quite  effective.  The  old  sideboard  from 
Little  Milton  that  had  been  such  a  clumsy  obstacle  in  the 
North  End  Road  house  went  into  the  recess  and  was  quite 
in  keeping  with  the  style  of  the  pilasters  and  the  arch.  And 
one  or  two  other  solid  pieces  we  had  saved  from  the  sale 
of  the  vicarage  furniture  carried  out  the  general  feeling  of 
solidity  and  mass. 

"Filthily  Georgian,  of  course,"  was  Geddes's  summary, 
"but  it's  rather  good  of  its  kind.  You've  got  the  idea  of 
leisure  and  space  anyway.  And  he  went  up  and  down 
the  unencumbered  aisles  on  either  side  of  my  centre  table, 
with  his  queer  dancing  steps,  and  then  backwards  and 
forwards  in  the  clear  space  between  the  table  and  the  recess. 
"You've  sort  of  modernised  it,  too,  Hornby,"  he  went  on. 
"You've  taken  an  old  idea  and  done  it  better." 

"He's  let  his  books  out,  for  one  thing,"  put  in  Horton- 
Smith,  and  pointed  to  the  long  low  book-case  that  the 
Berners  Street  firm  had  made  for  me.  "In  the  proper 
Georgian  house  there  wouldn't  have  been  any  books  to 
speak  of,  and  if  there  had,  they'd  have  been  behind  glass 
doors." 

"Oh!  yes,  Hornby's  a  modern,  all  right,"  agreed  Geddes, 


ON  THE  GROUND  FLOOR  109 

still  prancing  up  and  down.  "That's  what  I  mean  he — he 
has  individualised  bad  material." 

That  point  of  view  did  not  greatly  appeal  to  me  at  the 
time.  No  doubt  I  had  individualised  my  room,  but  I  had 
done  it  unconsciously.  Neither  Geddes  nor  Horton-Smith 
gave  any  expression  to  my  real  feeling  about  this  new 
lodging  place  of  mine;  and  I  was  too  shy  to  be  articulate 
about  it. 

For  what  that  room  meant  to  me  was  not  artistic  satis- 
faction but  release.  For  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  was 
aware  of  my  own  independence.  I  felt  bigger  and  stronger 
in  Keppel  Street.  I  realised  a  sense  of  power  in  myself.  In 
two  more  days  another  fetter  would  have  been  thrown  off. 
I  was  leaving  Heaton  &  Baxter  on  the  following  Satur- 
day, and  then  I  should  have  leisure  to  do  my  own  work. 

I  only  had  a  few  "full-size"  drawings  still  to  make  for 
Parkinson's  house,  but  I  was  full  of  plans.  I  had  ideas 
for  two  or  three  articles  on  design  that  I  was  fairly  con- 
fident would  be  accepted  by  The  Studio;  and  I  meant, 
now,  to  go  in  for  a  competition  on  my  own.  I  believed 
that  in  my  earlier  collaborations  the  fanaticism  of  Geddes 
had  hampered  me. 

The  sense  of  independence  was  the  dominant  motive  in 
the  first  two  or  three  weeks  of  my  new  life.  I  had  not 
changed  my  ambitions  for  the  future.  I  still  looked  forward 
to  marrying  my  cousin,  and  to  the  enclosing  of  myself 
within  the  little  circle  of  the  successful  professional  man. 
But  meanwhile  I  was  becoming  more  contented  with  the 
idea  of  making  my  own  way,  and  as  a  consequence  I  lost 
much  of  my  resentment  towards  my  uncle.  .  .  . 

Gladys  and  Aunt  Agatha  came  to  tea  with  me  on  the 
following  Sunday  afternoon.  They  both  approved  my 
sitting-room-office;  and  Gladys  was  particularly  charming. 
She  talked  to  me  as  she  used  to  talk  before  our  engage- 
ment ;  and  I  remembered  the  Eastbourne  holiday  with  quite 
a  glow  of  sentiment.  I  felt  hopeful  that  evening.  I  be- 
lieved that  our  marriage  might  after  all  be  a  success. 


THE  life  of  the  house  began  its  overtures  to  me  through 
my  sitting-room  window.  I  had  arranged  my  draw- 
ing board  on  two  stained  wood  trestles  and  I  stood  at  the 
window  to  work.  The  light  was  quite  good.  My  room 
faced  north,  and  although  the  street  was  not  wide,  the 
houses  immediately  opposite  were  only  three  stories  high. 
For  dark  days  I  had  two  incandescent  gas  burners  with 
shades.  The  house  was  not  wired  for  electric  light. 

The  life  of  the  street  did  not  seduce  my  attention  after 
the  first  day  or  two — I  was  interested  in  my  work  and 
was  not  afraid  of  distractions.  But  by  degrees,  and  almost 
against  my  will,  my  attention  was  drawn  to  the  life  of  the 
house  in  which  I  lived. 

I  heard  the  footsteps  coming  downstairs  and  along  the 
hall,  and  then  the  opening  and  closing  of  the  front  door. 
And  inevitably,  as  it  seemed,  I  always  glanced  up  to  watch 
the  departure  of  my  unknown  house-mate. 

The  early  morning  traffic  was  soon  resolved  into  an 
orderly  routine.  I  came  to  know  the  steps  and  the  methods 
of  the  four  men  who  left  the  house  between  eight-thirty  and 
ten  o'clock.  Three  of  them  turned  east  when  they  went 
out,  and  two  of  those  three  always  left  together.  The  fourth 
turned  westwards  towards  the  Tottenham  Court  Road,  and 
passed  under  my  window.  He  was  a  small,  plumpish  man, 
with  hair  that  must  have  been  prematurely  grey  for  he 
did  not  appear  to  be  more  than  thirty.  I  guessed  him  to 

no 


THE  REST  OF  THE  HOUSE  111 

be  a  German.  On  wet  days  he  sometimes  wore  a  bowler 
hat  with  his  frock  coat  I  was  not  interested  in  him,  but 
he  always  looked  up  at  my  window  as  he  passed.  He  did 
not  go  out  until  half-past  nine  and  I  had  begun  work  by 
then ;  and  when  I  had  learned  his  habits,  I  used  to  step  back 
into  the  room  to  avoid  meeting  his  eye.  I  knew  that  if  I 
did  not  he  would  begin  by  smiling  at  me,  and  that  then 
we  should  soon  be  exchanging  nods ;  and  after  that  I  might 
have  to  speak  to  him  if  I  met  him  in  the  hall  or  the  street, 
and  so  it  would  come  to  having  him  in  my  rooms.  One 
may  go  on  nodding  to  a  man  in  a  railway  carriage,  or 
through  a  window  for  years  without  taking  any  further 
notice  of  him;  but  if  one  meets  the  same  man  afterwards 
in  new  circumstances,  it  is  as  if  one  had  suddenly  dis- 
covered a  friend.  And  certainly  I  did  not  desire  that  plump, 
ill-dressed  young  fellow-lodger  of  mine  for  a  friend.  I 
imagined  myself  to  be  his  social  superior. 

If  the  morning  departure  of  those  four  men  had  marked 
an  ebb  which  receded  and  left  me  free  from  distraction 
until  the  uncertain  flow  began  to  return  at  six  o'clock,  I 
should  have  remained  forever  detached,  stranded  high  and 
dry,  as  it  were,  on  the  beach  of  my  professional  distinction. 
But  that  preliminary  receding  was  no  more  than  an  uninter- 
esting preface  to  the  life  of  the  day.  I  have  thought  without 
consideration  of  the  morning  signs  as  a  tide,  indicative  of 
the  broad  human  movement  from  west  to  east  that  sets 
with  such  regularity  each  week  day.  That  metaphor  fails, 
however,  when  I  look  back  at  the  irregular  swirls  and  cur- 
rents that  I  presently  began  to  watch  with  increasing  in- 
terest. 

The  first  of  those  other  lives  that  aroused  my  curiosity 
was  presented  to  me  as  a  tall,  thin,  clean-shaven  man,  who 
wore  a  soft  hat  and  walked  with  a  stoop  of  the  shoulders. 
I  originally  put  him  down  as  an  artist.  He  had  dark  hair 
that  he  wore  rather  long,  and  a  lock  of  it  often  escaped 
from  under  the  brim  of  his  hat  and  trailed  across  his  fore- 
head. His  hours  were  quite  uncertain  except  on  Thursday, 
on  which  day  he  left  the  house  about  eleven,  and  returned 


112  HOUSE-MATES 

carrying  a  parcel  sometime  during  the  afternoon.  On  other 
days  he  might  stay  in  the  house  until  four  or  five  o'clock, 
or  not  go  out  at  all,  unless  it  were  that  I  missed  hearing 
or  seeing  him.  But  I  knew  unmistakably  the  sound  of 
his  going.  He  always  stopped  in  the  hall  and  went  through 
the  letters  that  accumulated  during  the  day  on  the  yellow 
oak  table  that  stood  against  the  wall,  under  the  gas  jet.  It 
was  not  easy  to  read  in  that  hall  until  the  gas  was  lit.  The 
only  light  came  through  the  semicircular  fan  over  the 
hall-door;  and  the  thick  wooden  bars  of  the  fan  impeded 
some  of  the  light,  and  the  remains  of  the  coloured  glass 
most  of  the  rest.  The  fan  had  originally  been  glazed  in 
dark  blue,  and  only  those  panes  which  had  been  broken 
and  replaced  permitted  the  passage  of  a  thin  straggle  of 
white  light.  The  business  of  sorting  the  letters  on  the 
hall  table  was  often  a  long  one.  I  do  not  think  I  often 
missed  hearing  him. 

"The  Viting,"  as  I  still  thought  of  her,  seldom  went  out 
until  the  evening.  I  only  saw  her  three  times  in  the  first 
two  weeks,  once  through  the  window  in  the  early  after- 
noon; the  next  time  in  the  evening,  an  illuminating  vision 
to  which  I  shall  refer  later;  and  once  when  I  deliberately 
went  out  into  the  hall  as  I  heard  her  coming  downstairs — 
she  cut  me  dead  on  that  occasion. 

But  there  were  still  three  other  people,  all  women,  whom 
I  came  to  know  by  sight.  The  capacity  of  that  warren 
was  truly  wonderful. 

II 

I  am  covered  with  a  hot  shame,  even  now,  when  I  re- 
member my  inferences  concerning  those  other  three  women. 
I  have  been  tempted  to  omit  any  account  of  my  horrible 
blindness  in  this  particular;  for  after  the  lapse  of  years  I 
still  blush  uncomfortably  at  the  remembrance;  I  feel 
ashamed  as  if  I  had  been  guilty  of  some  unpleasant  sin. 
And  yet  I  can  find  good  excuse  for  my  blunder. 

The  nasty  truth  is  that  during  the  first  week  or  two  of 


THE  REST  OF  THE  HOUSE  113 

my  observations  through  the  window  I  imagined  those  other 
three  women  to  be  following  the  same  occupation  as  Miss 
Rose  Whiting.  I  had  come  to  Keppel  Street  prepared  to 
find  it  a  harbour  for  prostitution — my  suspicion  concern- 
ing the  important  lodger  who  occupied  the  rooms  above 
me  was  entirely  confirmed  within  ten  days  of  the  time  I 
arrived.  And  my  expectation  hypnotised  me.  I  took  no 
trouble  to  examine  appearances  or  weigh  probabilities.  I 
was  an  infernal  young  fool  who  leapt  to  unwarranted  con- 
clusions without  a  particle  of  evidence.  But  I  cannot  write 
of  my  mistake  without  losing  my  temper;  and  the  object 
of  my  indignation  is  that  smug,  would-be  professional  young 
whelp  who  stared  out  of  his  window.  I  can  regard  other 
aspects  of  myself  in  that  period  with  a  contemptuous  toler- 
ance; but  that  short  phase  of  the  young  Wilfred  Hornby 
fills  me  with  an  irritation  and  disgust  I  cannot  control. 

However,  I  will  begin  by  giving  an  account  of  the  inci- 
dent that  confirmed  my  suspicion  of  "the  Viting."  I  want 
to  convince  myself  that  I  had  some  excuse. 

I  had  gone  to  the  window  and  pulled  up  the  blind  about 
eleven  o'clock  one  night.  I  had  no  especial  purpose  be- 
yond looking  at  the  weather.  It  had  been  raining  all  day 
and  the  street  still  gleamed  in  the  lamp  light,  although  I 
guessed  from  what  I  could  see  of  the  sky  that  the  clouds  had 
broken  and  the  moon  was  shining.  I  was  not  thinking  of 
my  fellow-lodgers  just  then,  but  I  peered  down  the  street 
when  I  heard  the  aprons  of  a  hansom  clap  together  a  few 
doors  off.  The  cab  drove  away  immediately  and  then  I 
could  see  the  man  and  woman  who  had  alighted  from  it  talk- 
ing together.  I  drew  back  as  they  came  past  my  window.  I 
had  recognised  "the  Viting,"  and  I  did  not  want  her  to 
think  J  was  spying,  but  I  heard  the  click  of  her  latchkey 
and  immediately  afterwards  her  voice,  making  it  very  clear 
indeed  that  she  was  saying  good-night.  When  she  had  gone 
upstairs  I  looked  out  again  and  saw  the  man  walking 
up  and  down  on  the  opposite  pavement. 

I  wondered  what  he  was  doing.  He  had  an  air  that  was 
half  furtive  and  half  impatient.  He  kept  looking  up  at  the 


114  HOUSE-MATES 

window  over  mine,  and  once  he  evidently  saw  me,  and 
frowned  and  moved  away  as  if  he  were  afraid  of  being 
recognised.  I  did  not  move  from  my  post  of  observation. 
I  think  T  had  some  unlikely  suspicion  of  his  purpose.  I 
was  certainly  astonished  when  he  walked  boldly  across  the 
road,  stared  a  moment's  defiance  at  me  and  opened  our 
front  door  with  a  latchkey.  I  heard  him  go  upstairs  with 
the  surreptitious  tread  of  a  man  who  attempts  to  evade 
notice.  And  I  heard  "the  Viting's"  door  close  a  few  seconds 
later. 

I  understood,  then,  that  she  had  lent  him  her  latchkey, 
and  I  had  no  more  doubts  as  to  her  profession.  The  police 
were  levying  blackmail  very  freely  at  that  time,  and  Miss 
Whiting's  trick  to  avoid  suspicion  was,  as  I  afterwards 
learnt,  a  concession  to  the  explicit  instructions  of  our  land- 
lord, which  were :  "No  men  in  ze  house.  In  ze  street 
outside  it  ees  all  as  you  like,  but  in  ze  house,  No." 

After  that  incident  I  was  on  the  lookout  for  further  in- 
timations ;  and  I  must  admit  that  I  hoped  to  find  evidence. 
I  make  no  apologies  for  that.  After  the  kind  of  home  life 
that  had  always  been  mine,  this  plunge  into  what  I  consid- 
ered the  lurid  wickedness  of  Keppel  Street  was  immensely 
thrilling.  I  wanted  to  be  something  more  than  a  spectator, 
and  yet  I  was  afraid.  I  realised  that  this  occasional  pas- 
sion towards  adventure  was  only  a  part  of  me,  and  that 
I  dared  not  enter  the  mysterious  garden  of  pleasure  un- 
less I  were  sure  of  a  way  of  escape.  I  was  intimidated  by 
the  thought  that  Miss  Whiting  might  come  to  visit  me  at 
her  own  pleasure  and  not  at  mine.  Nevertheless  I  was 
tempted.  For  some  reason  this  game  appeared  so  much 
more  fascinating  than  my  experiences  with  Nellie  Roberts. 
I  pictured  entertaining  Miss  Whiting  as  a  respectable  guest 
in  my  own  rooms.  Loneliness  excited  my  imagination  to 
lurid  possibilities. 

It  was  a  sudden  impulse  to  drown  the  tantalisation  of 
thought  in  reality  that  sent  me  out  into  the  hall  when  I 
heard  "the  Viting"  coming  downstairs  a  few  days  after 
the  adventure  of  the  latchkey.  I  was  very  nervous  but 


THE  REST  OF  THE  HOUSE  115 

I  summoned  up  enough  courage  to  look  at  her  as  she 
passed  me.  She  returned  my  look  with  a  contemptuous 
stare.  Perhaps  her  illicit  visitor  had  reported  my  vigil  at 
the  window.  I  went  back  to  my  sitting-room,  humiliated 
and  puzzled. 

ill 

The  first  of  the  other  three  women  I  soon  came  to  know 
by  sight  was  rather  stout,  and  I  judged  her  to  be  approach- 
ing forty,  but  she  was  handsome  still  and  walked  with  a 
certain  self-confidence  and  dignity.  She  was  always  wear- 
ing a  tremendous  fur  coat,  rather  shabby  with  age,  I  fancied, 
but  it  looked  impressive.  Her  movements  were  too  erratic 
to  suggest  any  particular  routine  of  occupation,  and  I  do 
not  blame  myself  severely  for  my  entirely  erroneous  esti- 
mate of  her  virtue. 

The  other  two  almost  invariably  went  out  together.  I 
saw  them  first  on  the  second  day  of  my  freedom  from 
attendance  at  the  office  in  Lincoln's  Inn;  and  for  about  a 
fortnight  their  habits  appeared  quite  regular.  They  left  the 
house  a  little  before  eleven  and  returned  some  time  between 
five  and  seven-thirty.  The  shorter  of  the  two  was  rather 
plain,  with  dull  eyes  and  a  clever  forehead ;  she  would  have 
had  a  good  figure  if  she  had  taken  any  trouble  with  it. 

Her  friend  I  cannot  describe  in  this  detached  impersonal 
way.  I  only  know  that  one  morning  she  looked  up  at  me 
as  she  passed,  turning  her  head  with  a  little  quick  smile 
that  was  not  meant  for  me.  Her  eyes  were  bright  with  the 
life  of  youth ;  eyes  that  displayed  at  the  same  moment  both 
her  sincerity  and  the  eagerness  of  her  spirit.  And  I  did 
not  guess  that  her  smile  was  not  for  me.  I  was  unexpectedly 
flattered  and  thrilled.  I  had  no  time  to  return  her  smile. 
She  looked  up  with  one  of  her  eager  impulsive  movements 
and  looked  away  again.  But  she  left  me  changed. 

I  thrust  the  thought  of  Miss  Whiting  from  me  as  if  she 
had  been  in  the  last  stages  of  leprosy.  I  forgot  Adela  Lyn- 
neker,  who  had  until  then  filled  some  blank  space  of  my 


116  HOUSE-MATES 

desires,  even  after  her  inexplicable  elopement  with  the  vil- 
lage carpenter.  And  I  came  back  to  the  thought  of  my 
cousin  Gladys  with  a  new  feeling  of  despair.  She  appeared 
to  me,  then,  as  representing  all  that  was  tame  and  dull;  all 
that  was  in  some  way  stale  and  exhausted. 

That  one  gay  little  smile  was  indeed  responsible  for  many 
effects  upon  me.  It  certainly  added  a  new  tensity  to  my 
observations  of  the  household.  I  knew  by  then  the  step  for 
which  I  waited;  but  every  time  the  door  clanged  I  hoped 
that  I  had  been  mistaken,  that  despite  the  irrefutable  evi- 
dence of  my  ears  I  should  see  the  desired  figure  pass  my 
window  and  that  she  would  once  more  turn  her  head  and 
look  up  at  me. 

She  never  did.  And  after  the  first  fortnight  of  my  watch- 
ing she  changed  her  routine.  Her  morning  departures  be- 
came inexplicably  irregular,  but  for  one  week  she  and  her 
friend  left  the  house  every  night  soon  after  seven  and  re- 
turned a  little  before  midnight. 

It  was  then  I  wondered  and  made  a  fool  of  myself ;  but 
before  that  I  had  been  up  to  Ken  Lodge  and  had  received 
the  present  of  my  freedom  to  love  whomsoever  I  would. 


IV 

I  did  not  go  up  to  Ken  Lodge  that  Sunday  morning  with 
any  intention  of  breaking  off  my  engagement  to  Gladys.  I 
was  still  held  in  the  thrall  of  my  conventional  ambitions. 
The  movement  of  my  thoughts  towards  Miss  Whiting  and 
afterwards  towards  the  unknown  girl  who  had  smiled  as 
she  passed  my  window,  was  indicative  of  nothing  more 
than  a  desire  to  take  advantage  of  the  little  liberty  that 
remained  to  me.  I  had  formulated  some  kind  of  rash  de- 
termination to  taste  once  more  adventure  before  I  settled 
down  for  life.  That  resolve  would  have  appeared  very 
reprehensible  to  my  uncle  and  aunt  and  cousin,  but  as  I 
went  up  to  see  them  I  had  no  feeling  of  guilt.  Something 
in  me  was  breaking  loose,  and  the  rest  of  me  was  temporar- 
ily incapable  of  criticism. 


THE  REST  OF  THE  HOUSE  117 

I  went  up  to  Hampstead  after  morning  service.  I  had  a 
standing  invitation  to  join  the  Williams  at  church  and  go 
back  with  them  to  dinner,  and  I  felt  that  I  was  making  a 
mild  bid  for  independence  by  cutting  the  first  half  of  the 
programme. 

The  parlour-maid  who  opened  the  door  gave  me  the 
smile  proper  to  an  expected  visitor.  "I  think  Miss  Gladys 
is  in  the  drawing-room,"  she  said,  and  I  relieved  her  from 
further  attendance  on  me  with  the  nod  of  one  who  was 
quite  at  home  in  the  house. 

I  must  have  made  some  noise  crossing  the  parquet,  and 
hanging  up  my  coat  in  the  lobby,  and  I  remember  that  I 
had  a  cold  and  blew  my  nose  quite  audibly  just  outside  the 
drawing-room  door.  Moreover,  I  had  been  standing  in- 
side the  room  for  one  of  those  indefinitely  short  but  con- 
sciously measurable  periods  of  time,  before  Gladys  dis- 
engaged herself  from  Blake's  arm  and  turned  to  greet  me. 
He  may  have  been  too  engrossed  in  his  own  affairs  to 
notice  my  entrance — he  was  talking,  of  course;  he  was  al- 
ways talking — but  I  am  quite  sure  that  Gladys  was  pre- 
pared for  my  entrance,  and  had  preferred  to  break  the 
news  to  me  in  that  way  rather  than  by  any  formal  announce- 
ment. 

As  for  me,  I  was  too  unprepared  and  too  conventionally 
minded  to  understand  at  once  the  real  significance  of  the 
embrace  I  had  just  seen.  I  had  forgotten  my  old  dream 
of  release  by  this  very  agent,  and  I  was  confusedly  finding 
some  excuse  for  Gladys;  trying  to  think  of  Blake's  atti- 
tude as  in  some  way  parental — he  must  have  been  nearly 
fifty. 

And  then  I  saw  that  Gladys  was  covered  with  a  well- 
assumed  confusion. 

"I — I  thought  you  were  alone,"  was  the  idiotic  excuse  I 
made,  as  if  I  were  the  culpable  person.  I  had,  indeed,  a 
sense  of  having  been  guilty  of  intrusion. 

Blake  laughed  self-consciously  and  my  cousin  took  her 
cue  from  that,  subsided  gracefully  into  an  armchair  and  hid 
her  eyes.  I  have  a  distinct  impression  at  this  moment 


118  HOUSE-MATES 

of 'her  white,  rather  bony  hands,  pressed  against  her  face. 

"Oh!  well,  well,"  Blake  was  saying  with  the  nearest  at- 
tempt at  propitiation  he  ever  showed  towards  me.  "The 
truth  of  the  matter  is,  young  man,  that  your  cousin  has 
changed  her  mind.  I  daresay  I  took  her  by  surprise."  No 
doubt  he  flattered  himself  that  the  initiative  was  all  his 
own. 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  that  she  has  ..."  I  began  and 
stopped  because  I  could  think  of  no  phrase  but  "she  has 
chucked  me  for  you,"  a  phrase  that  I  instinctively  rejected 
as  unworthy  of  the  occasion. 

"Oh!  well,  these  things  happen  sometimes.  No  need  to 
make  a  scene,"  Blake  said  pompously.  He  was  obviously 
bursting  with  pride  at  having,  by  his  own  personal  attrac- 
tion, snatched  a  unique  possession  from  another  collector. 
If  he  had  ever  had  a  moment's  doubt  as  to  the  desirability 
of  Gladys  as  a  property,  my  claim  to  prior  ownership  must 
have  decided  him  at  once  and  forever. 

"Very  rough  on  you,  no  doubt,"  he  went  on  and  paused ; 
perhaps  to  reject  the  too  blatant  expression  of  what  must 
have  been  in  my  mind;  the  plain  inference  that  I  could 
never  have  had  a  chance  after  he  entered  the  market.  "But, 
well,  there  you  are!"  he  said,  "your  cousin  will  tell  you, 
perhaps,  how  sorry  she  is  not  to  have  found  out  her  mis- 
take before  .  .  ." 

I  believe  he  continued  to  talk  in  the  same  strain  for  two 
or  three  minutes.  One  cannot  gauge  time  in  such  situa- 
tions as  that.  And  I  was  only  half  aware  of  him;  another 
side  of  my  mind  was  bubbling  with  a  mischievous  joy  at  my 
escape — a  joy  that  I  regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of 
Wilfred  Hornby  in  his  best  Sunday  clothes,  as  quite  dis- 
tinctly the  wrong  emotion  in  those  circumstances. 

"You  needn't  have  done  it  in  such  a  rotten  hole  and  cor- 
ner sort  of  way,"  was  my  long  postponed  verdict  on  the 
affair,  and  then  I  gathered  courage  from  the  enunciation 
of  what  seemed  obviously  the  proper  sentiment,  and  tried 
to  shut  Blake  down  by  adding,  "I  ought  to  have  been  told." 

"Pooh,  pooh!"  Blake  said.    "I  only  spoke  to  Miss  Wil- 


THE  REST  OF  THE  HOUSE  119 

Hams  this  morning — five  minutes  ago — for  the  first  time." 
And  as  an  amateur  in  love,  who  was  so  superbly  profes- 
sional in  all  other  things,  he  found  it  necessary  to  add  "the 
recognition  of  each  other's  feelings — er — overwhelmed  us." 

"You  infernal  ass,"  was  the  unspoken  comment  of  my 
bubbling  sub-consciousness. 

"I  ought  to  have  been  told,"  was  the  stubborn  repetition 
that  my  conventional  self  found  appropriate. 

And  then  Gladys  came  out  from  the  shelter  of  Blake's 
importance.  "Oh!  Wilfred,  how  could  I  tell  you  when  I 
didn't  know  myself?"  she  asked,  and  with  an  ungainly 
movement  that  reminded  me  of  her  tennis,  she  made  a 
little  bobbing  run  past  me  and  left  the  game  to  her  new 
lover. 

"Now,  be  sensible,"  was  his  prompt  opening,  delivered 
apparently  with  the  certainty  of  one  who  usually  found 
that  stroke  unplayable. 

I  am  glad  that  I  stood  up  to  him.  I  think  some  escape 
of  gas  from  the  secret  ebullition  that  was  going  on  within 
me  helped  to  inspire  the  expression  of  my  grievance.  What- 
ever the  cause,  as  soon  as  Blake  and  I  were  alone,  I  managed 
to  find  a  statement,  however  boyish  and  impertinent. 

"Oh !  of  course  she  changed  her  mind,"  I  said.  "You're 
rich  and  famous  in  a  sort  of  way,  I  suppose.  I  don't  blame 
her.  But  I  think  it  was  a  dirty  game  of  yours ;  coming  in 
and — and  outbidding  me." 

"You'll  be  sorry  for  this,  Hornby,"  he  threatened  me; 
and  his  curly  moustache  bristled  truculently  in  response  to 
the  snarl  of  his  lip. 

"Bosh !"  I  said.  "I'm  talking  to  you  in  the  only  language 
you  understand.  This  is  just  another  of  your  dirty  tricks ; 
the  kind  of  trick  you  play  in  your  business." 

He  scowled  furiously,  but  he  had  no  real  courage.  His 
temper  was  of  the  kind  that  finds  vent  in  breaking  a  not 
too  precious  piece  of  furniture.  I  had  at  least  four  inches 
the  advantage  of  him  in  height;  I  was  young  and  active, 
and  he  judged  me  to  be  deliriously  angry.  His  scowl  no 


120  HOUSE-MATES 

more  intimidated  me'  than  the  bark  of  a  French  poodle 
attempting  a  dignified  retreat. 

"My  good  fellow  .  .  ."  he  began. 

"Yes,  I  hope  I  am,"  I  retorted,  snatching  at  the  sugges- 
tion, "and  that's  just  what  you're  not.  You  don't  play 
the  game."  All  my  grievance  had  found  vent  in  my  con- 
tempt for  him  and  his  professional  methods.  "You're  little 
better  than  a  thief  as  a  matter  of  fact,"  I  went  on.  "You 
cheat  people  in  business,  and  now  you've  cheated  me  by 
buying  Gladys  over  my  head.  You  needn't  imagine  that 
she's  in  love  with  you  any  more  than  she  was  in  love  with 
me.  She  doesn't  know  what  love  means  any  more  than  you 
do.  ..."  I  felt  the  anti-climax  coming;  I  had  been  lured 
into  a  bad  opening ;  and  I  concluded  too  boyishly  and  spoiled 
my  effect. 

"You're  just  that,"  I  shouted,  "an  infernal  swindler." 

And  then,  as  I  turned  quickly  to  make  a  passionate,  door- 
slamming  retreat,  I  nearly  knocked  over  my  uncle  who  was 
coming  quickly  up  the  room  behind  me. 

"W — Wilfred,"  he  stammered  furiously  without  an  in- 
troductory cough,  and  nearly  winked  himself  off  his  feet. 

My  long  habit  of  respect  for  his  authority  checked  me 
slightly,  but  I  pushed  past  him.  "He'll  explain,"  I  said  with 
a  gesture  of  contempt  towards  Blake. 

The  collector  had  his  head  back  and  was  most  unneces- 
sarily curling  his  moustache  as  I  got  out  of  the  room. 

It  was  no  kind  of  dramatic  triumph  for  me,  but  I  felt 
triumphant  as  I  marched  down  Heath  Street.  My  face 
was  burning  and  I  felt  as  if  my  eyes  flashed  defiance  of 
the  whole  world.  • 

I  had  not  completely  recovered  when  I  reached  Keppel 
Street,  and  it  was  the  last  tumultuous  intoxication  of  self- 
assertion  that  betrayed  me  when  I  unfortunately  met  my 
lady  of  the  smile,  and  her  friend,  coming  out  of  73. 

I  raised  my  hat  to  them  and  grinned. 


THE  REST  OF  THE  HOUSE 


I  have  it  on  the  best  possible  authority  that  my  grin 
was  one  of  the  worst  kind,  ingratiating,  oily,  altogether 
contemptible ;  so  I  had  better  put  the  horror  on  record  and 
leave  it  unmodified.  I  believe  I  have  exaggerated  the  dis- 
gust of  it  in  my  own  mind.  I  have  writhed  so  often  at  the 
recollection  that  my  smile  and  my  attitude  at  the  critical 
moment  have  been  crystallised  into  a  vision  of  something 
obscene  and  revolting.  But  I  must  leave  any  mitigation 
of  the  general  impression  to  those  who  can  find  for  me  an 
excuse  that  I  will  not  proffer  on  my  own  behalf.  For 
my  part,  I  know  that  I  deserved  the  snubbing  I  received. 

It  may  be  that  that  reply  was  chiefly  responsible  for  the 
complete  abasement  I  have  confessed.  Her  look  had  pity 
mixed  with  its  scorn.  Her  companion  blushed  and  ducked 
her  head  in  the  common  manner  of  the  timid  shop-girl; 
but  she  to  whom  my  leer  was  addressed  met  my  eyes  with 
perfect  self-possession.  And  something  in  her  pitying  dis- 
dain seemed  to  place  me  as  a  horrid  little  cad  who  ought 
to  have  known  better.  For  one  instant  I  became  the  thing 
she  had  seen.  I  wilted.  I  believe  if  I  had  had  the  power 
of  speech  I  should  have  murmured,  "Beg  pardon,  I'm 
sure." 

My  recovery  a  couple  of  minutes  later  touched  the  op- 
posite extreme.  I  paced  my  sitting-room  in  a  fury.  I  saw 
a  million  excuses  for  myself,  but  none  for  her.  I  found 
such  description  for  her  as  "vain  little  fool" ;  I  accused  her 
of  putting  on  airs;  I  hated  her  with  all  the  vehemence  I 
could  muster. 

I  am  not  sure  how  long  I  managed  to  keep  my  resent- 
ment against  her  at  that  high  defensive  level.  I  know  that 
I  re-stimulated  my  anger  until  I  could  no  longer  respond 
to  my  determined  consideration  of  her  iniquity  in  first  smil- 
ing at  me  and  then  "cocking  her  head  in  the  air  as  though 
she  had  been  insulted."  But  by  tea-time  (I  had  had  no 
dinner)  I  had  fallen  into  a  mood  of  depression — all  my 


HOUSE-MATES 

worldly  prospects  were  apparently  wrecked  beyond  re- 
covery. I  had  outraged  my  uncle's  sense  of  propriety; 
the  scheming,  artificial  Gladys  had  thrown  me  over  for 
her  own  deliberate  ends;  and  I  had  crowned  the  day  by 
making  an  ass  of  myself.  I  had  come  to  that  admission  by 
five  o'clock. 

I  had  a  sort  of  high  tea  at  the  Vienna  Cafe,  but  when  I 
went  up  to  the  first  floor  afterwards,  the  atmosphere  of  the 
place  revolted  me.  I  went  out  and  walked  up  and  down 
Oxford  Street  for  a  time  but  when,  near  the  Circus,  a 
woman  smiled  at  me  I  shuddered  and  took  refuge  in  a 
bus. 

I  was  free,  now,  but  that  particular  form  of  celebrating 
my  liberty  had  lost  all  attraction  for  me,  and  I  finally 
slunk  back  to  Keppel  Street,  and  tried  to  find  distraction  in 
literature. 

Not  until  I  was  going  to  bed  did  the  first  gleam  of  con- 
solation come  to  me;  and  then  I  reflected  with  faint  glee 
that  Blake  had,  for  once  in  his  life,  been  done. 

I  wonder  if  he  has  ever  appreciated  the  irony  of  the  fact 
that  the  show  piece  of  his  collection  is  a  fraud? 

I  saw  them  at  a  private  view  just  before  the  War;  and 
Gladys  bowed  and  would  probably  have  spoken  to  me  if 
I  had  given  her  an  opportunity.  She  had  changed  very 
little.  I  thought  she  looked  thinner  and  a  trifle  sharper, 
that  was  all.  She  had  her  little  boy  with  her ;  a  peaky  child 
with  the  thinnest  legs  I've  ever  seen. 


VI 
THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  ROW 


THE  experiences  of  that  Sunday  had  an  immediate  ef- 
fect upon  me,  but  at  the  time  I  was  quite  mistaken  as  to 
the  nature  of  the  change  that  was  working  underneath  the 
appearance.  All  the  week  that  followed  was  devoted  to 
strenuous  work.  I  understood  that  I  was  not  one  of  Life's 
favourite  children.  I  could  count  no  longer  either  upon 
my  uncle's  influence  or  his  financial  assistance,  and  I  wilfully 
decided  that  he  had  always  disliked  me.  But  while  I  set 
my  teeth  and  began  the  effort  of  practical  training  by  which 
I  hoped  to  win  the  little  race  that  appeared  as  the  only 
goal  of  my  youth,  I  made  the  immense  mistake  of  begin- 
ning in  a  wrong  spirit. 

During  that  week  I  was  full  of  resentment  against  the 
world.  I  felt  that  I  had  been  thwarted  and  impeded.  I 
worked  savagely,  obstinately;  and  my  mind  was  cramped 
and  stubborn.  I  did  not  answer  the  letter  I  received  from 
Gladys  on  Monday  evening,  and  I  wasted  considerable  time 
in  dodging  back  from  the  window  whenever  I  heard  any 
one  leaving  the  house.  Gladys  was  comparatively  negli- 
gible— if  she  had  thrown  me  over  on  the  ground  of  our 
incompatible  temperaments,  I  should  have  been  relieved  and 
grateful — but  against  the  girl  who  had  so  effectively  snubbed 
me  on  the  doorstep  I  entertained  a  definite  rancour.  Pres- 
ently I  meant  to  have  my  revenge,  but  in  the  meantime  I 
did  not  want  to  see  her  or  to  let  her  see  me. 

The  odds  were  too  heavily  against  me  in  any  play  be- 

123 


HOUSE-MATES 

tween  my  room  and  the  street.  She  could  walk  past  my 
window  with  a  contemptuous  disregard  of  my  presence, 
and  I  had  no  possible  means  of  retaliation.  I  knew  that 
she  would  not  see  me.  I  should  never  have  the  satisfac- 
tion of  appearing  too  engrossed  in  my  work  to  look  up. 
But  I  believed  that  my  absence  from  the  window  must  be 
noticed.  She  might  never  look  up,  but  her  friend  with  the 
shy  mouse-coloured  eyes  would  surely  peep  and  report 
that  I  was  not  there.  In  time — I  dwelt  on  that  idea  of  long 
abstention,  and  in  some  moods  I  knew  in  a  muddled  way 
that  I  meant  abstention,  that  I  was  denying  myself  the 
desire  to  look  at  her  again — in  time,  I  thought,  I  shall  have 
recovered  enough  dignity  to  venture  revenge;  I  shall  find 
an  opportunity  to  return  her  contempt.  I  never  had  a  doubt 
that  they  would  remember  me.  I  was  too  important  a  per- 
son in  that  house.  My  brass  plate  shone  in  unchallenged 
splendour  at  the  entrance ;  and  my  landlord  regarding  it,  I 
believe,  as  the  patent  of  his  respectability  polished  my  sign 
every  day  with  his  own  hands.  No  one  could  enter  73  Kep- 
pel  Street  without  the  staring  reminder  that  the  house 
was  primarily  the  residence  of  Wilfred  Hornby  A.R.I.B.A., 
Architect  and  Surveyor.  And  I  was  equally  sure  that  there 
could  be  no  doubt  of  my  identity. 

I  was  right  in  most  of  my  surmises.  Indeed,  in  only 
one  particular  was  I  ridiculously,  grotesquely  wrong.  Cher- 
ishing the  thought  of  my  own  position,  I  believed  that  my 
absence  from  the  window  would  finally  establish  my  dig- 
nity ;  while  the  truth  was  that  two  young  women  were  smil- 
ing at  my  humiliation.  T.hey  thought  that  I  was,  very 
properly,  ashamed  of  myself.  .  .  . 

I  sometimes  wonder,  now,  whether  I  should  not  have  de- 
veloped on  the  same  lines,  even  if  I  had  married  Gladys 
and  won  to  my  old  ambition  of,  say,  a  house  standing  in 
its  own  grounds  and  the  decent  complement  of  servants  that 
proclaims  a  man's  position.  The  process  might  have  been 
slower,  but  surely,  I  think,  some  influence  must  have  worked 
upon  me  sooner  or  later,  or  some  accident  would  have  hap- 
pened to  crack  the  shell  of  my  complacency. 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  ROW  125 

But  now  that  I  have  re-entered  the  life  of  that  house  in 
Keppel  Street,  and  am  imaginatively  living  again  in  the 
world  of  its  stirring  insistence,  I  feel  that  no  other  experi- 
ence could  ever  have  moved  me.  The  shock  and  adventure 
might  have  come  to  me  by  another  road,  but  not  the  de- 
mand to  associate  myself  with  the  common  interests  of 
humanity.  Even  during  that  week  of  obstinate  hostility 
to  one  member  of  the  household,  I  was  aware  of  something 
that  was  drawing  me  towards  intercourse  with  my  house- 
mates. I  remember  meeting  the  man  whom  I  had  mistaken 
for  an  artist,  and  being  moved  by  a  .sudden  desire  to  speak 
to  him.  I  came  in  at  the  front  door  while  he  was  peering 
at  the  letters  on  the  hall  table,  and  he  looked  up  with  a 
smile  as  if  he  would  thank  me  for  the  gift  of  light  I  had 
brought  him.  I  bowed  stiffly  and  went  past  him  into  my 
own  room,  but  I  wanted  to  speak  to  him.  Inside  me  the 
chicken  was  pecking  at  a  shell  just  too  strong,  as  yet,  to 
yield  to  those  cramped  struggles. 

Then  came  the  end  of  the  week  and  the  great  affair  of 
Saturday  night. 

II 

Oddly  enough  Geddes  was  with  me  that  evening,  and 
Geddes  remains — still — the  most  shell-bound  of  my  ac- 
quaintances. His  wife  had  been  ill  and  had  gone  to  stay 
with  her  mother  in  Hertfordshire,  and  he  had  been  kept 
in  town  by  a  meeting  at  the  Institute.  He  came  in  about 
half -past  nine — "to  talk  a  little  shop,"  as  he  explained,  but 
he  never  talked  anything  else. 

It  must  have  been  after  eleven  when  the  row  began.  I 
had  heard  Miss  Whiting  come  in  a  few  minutes  before, 
and  it  struck  me,  then,  that  she  must  be  in  a  bad  humour. 
She  banged  the  door  so  furiously  that  even  Geddes  paused 
a  moment  in  the  middle  of  a  disquisition  on  the  advantages 
of  a  new  fire-proof  partition  material  he  had  just  dis- 
covered. 

I  was  trying  to  concentrate  my  interest  on  his  analysis 


126  HOUSE-MATES 

when  I  heard  the  dim  beginnings  of  the  altercation  upstairs. 
I  knew,  at  once,  that  the  merest  echo  of  it  was  reaching 
me — "73"  was  a  well-built  house — and  I  strained  my  atten- 
tion to  hear  more.  That  muffled  shouting  had  the  urgent 
quality  that  gives  one  a  feeling  of  excited  uneasiness. 

Geddes  saw  that  I  was  not  listening  to  him,  and  merci- 
fully cut  off  his  string  of  technicalities. 

"Saturday  night  row,"  he  remarked.  "Do  you  often 
have  'em?" 

I  shook  my  head.  I  wanted  to  hear  what  was  going 
on.  I  got  up  and  walked  towards  the  door. 

"Take  my  advice  and  keep  out  of  it,"  Geddes  said, 
quietly. 

"Why?"  I  asked  sharply.  Geddes  harassed  me.  I  was 
interested,  excited  and  a  little  anxious.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  the  sound  of  those  voices  was,  in  some  way,  im- 
portant. 

"Never  know  what  you  may  be  let  in  for  in  a  house  like 
this,"  Geddes  said,  and  his  voice  had  an  effect  of  being  un- 
naturally audible.  Upstairs  there  was  turmoil  and  in  imagi- 
nation I  was  straining  to  enter  it.  Geddes's  calm  enuncia- 
tion was  like  a  voice  of  disembodied  warning  urging  me  not 
to  enter  the  world. 

Then  came  the  thump  of  some  heavy  piece  of  furniture 
on  the  floor  above. 

Geddes  stood  up.  "Don't  be  an  ass,  Hornby,"  he  said, 
as  I  put  my  fingers  on  the  door-handle. 

I  believe  he  went  on  urging  me  not  to  be  an  ass,  but  as 
I  opened  the  door  a  crash  of  broken  glass  or  china  drowned 
his  further  remonstrance,  and  my  consciousness  of  Geddes 
fell  into  the  background.  The  whole  house  was  suddenly 
vibrant  with  the  shrill  hysterical  voice  of  Miss  Whiting  and 
the  persistent,  monotonous  shouting  of  my  landlord. 

"Be  kvi-et,  I  say,  you.  Vill  you  be  ker-vi-et,  I  say,"  he 
repeated  on  an  increasingly  vindictive  note  of  expostula- 
tion. 

As  I  mounted  the  stairs  I  trembled  with  apprehension 
lest  the  rising  anger  of  Pferdminger  might  culminate  in 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  ROW  127 

some  physical  outrage.  He  seemed  to  be  reaching  the  limit 
of  his  self-control.  The  high  screaming  of  the  woman  was 
less  terrifying;  it  suggested  the  shriek  of  steam  from  a 
safety-valve. 

But  Pferdminger  had  not  the  quality  of  a  murderer  as 
I  knew  at  once  when  he  grasped  at  my  intervention.  He 
had  been  standing  at  the  threshold  of  Miss  Whiting's  open 
door  and  heard  me  as  I  bounded  up  the  short  flight  of  stairs 
to  the  landing. 

"Ach !  you  speak  to  her,"  he  shouted,  "she  ees  mad." 

Miss  Whiting  was  partly  undressed  and  was  still  reck- 
lessly discarding  her  most  intimate  garments  as  I  reached 
the  door  of  her  room.  Something  of  her  energy  must  have 
been  exhausted  by  then,  and  she  was  obviously  striving  to 
keep  the  pressure  of  her  fury  at  its  highest  point. 

"Turn  me  out,  would  you?"  she  screamed.  "Then  you 
can  damned  well  turn  me  out  stark  naked,  you  .  .  ." 

But  I  dare  not  report  her  speech.  The  epithet  she  found 
for  Pferdminger  made  me  wince  and  she  saw  that  I  winced 
and  repeated  her  obscenity  with  greater  distinctness  and  a 
new  touch  of  venom. 

"Be  kviet,  I  say,"  came  the  sound  of  Pferdminger's  voice 
from  behind  me. 

"Yair!"  was  the  derisive  jeer  of  Miss  Whiting  as  nearly 
as  I  can  render  it ;  and  she  made  the  sound  disgusting  even 
without  the  emphasis  of  her  gesture. 

She  held  us  intimidated  and  she  knew  it.  Standing  there 
in  her  chemise  and  stockings,  confessed  as  a  relatively 
fragile,  weak  creature,  she  dominated  us  by  the  recklessness 
of  her  passion.  She  had  cast  off  all  the  restraints  of  con- 
ventional life,  touched  some  absolute  of  self-expression  that 
was  too  strong  for  our  divided  minds.  We  were  afraid  of 
her  because  we  were  afraid  of  ourselves  and  of  the  judg- 
ment of  society.  She  was,  at  that  moment,  a  single  and  a 
powerful  personality.  We  had  to  fight  ourselves  before  we 
could  fight  her;  and  with  the  help  of  her  allies  she  out- 
numbered us. 

And  as  if  she,  too,  clearly  understood  her  advantage,  she 


128  HOUSE-MATES 

made  a  demonstration  of  her  impugnity.  She  snatched  a 
small  vase  from  the  mantelpiece,  held  it  poised  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  then  dashed  it  through  the  window. 

The  crash  of  breaking  glass  was  followed  almost  at  once 
by  the  furious  ringing  of  the  front  door  bell,  and  a  clamor- 
ous knocking  outside. 

Little  Pferdminger,  utterly  defeated,  crept  downstairs, 
calling  upon  God. 

"Police,"  remarked  Miss  Whiting  in  a  perfectly  level 
voice.  "That  dirty  little has  gone  to  let  'em  in." 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?"  I  asked.  They  were  the 
first  words  I  had  spoken.  For  me  the  tensity  of  the  situa- 
tion was  instantly  relaxed.  I  felt  as  if  I  had  awakened 
from  some  appalling  nightmare.  The  thing  I  had  mistaken 
for  a  figure  of  horror  and  disgust  had  taken  the  form  I 
recognised  as  human.  I  was  sorry  for  Miss  Whiting.  I 
wanted  to  advise  and  protect  her.  I  believed  that  now  she 
would  be  perfectly  reasonable,  tractable. 

The  heavy  tramp  of  feet  was  coming  upstairs  and  we 
could  hear  the  fretful  plaint  of  Pferdminger's  voice  assert- 
ing his  respectability. 

"Hadn't  you  better  get  something  on  ?"  I  said.  I  had  not 
for  one  instant  forgotten  my  status  in  civilisation  and  I 
judged  her,  too,  to  be  within  reach  of  my  acceptable  stand- 
ards. 

But  during  that  interval  of  tremendous  quiet  she  had 
only  been  saving  herself ;  and  it  may  be  that  having  experi- 
enced the  exaltation  of  power,  she  desired  to  reach  a  still 
higher  climax,  in  which  she  might  dominate  a  stronger 
enemy.  For  even  as  I  felt  the  touch  of  a  rough  grasp  on 
my  arm  and  heard  the  familiar  gruff,  "Now  then,  what's 
all  this?"  of  the  policeman's  voice,  Miss  Whiting  let  her- 
self go  again  with  a  horrible  scream  and  made  a  wild  sweep 
of  the  ornaments  that  still  remained  on  the  mantelpiece. 

I  was  beaten  and  knew  it,  but  the  two  bluff  men  who 
had  come  in  from  the  street  had  an  experience  and  an  au- 
thority that  I  lacked.  They  did  not  hesitate.  They  went 
straight  for  her  with  an  intensity  that  equalled  her  own. 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  ROW  129 

But  the  threat  of  their  rush  into  the  room  was  too  much 
for  me.  I  could  not  bear  it.  I  shrank  back  on  to  the 
landing.  I  heard  her  scream  "Don't  touch  me!"  and  my 
feeble  hands  went  up  to  my  ears. 

And  then,  in  the  middle  of  it  all,  came  a  queer  little  inter- 
lude that  I  cannot  explain.  I  found  myself  confronted  on 
the  landing  by  a  young  man  in  evening  dress  with  an  opera 
hat  cocked  jauntily  at  the  back  of  his  head.  I  do  not  know 
if  he  spoke  to  me ;  and  when  I  had  dropped  my  hands  he 
had  reached  the  door  of  Miss  Whiting's  room. 

"Oh!  Good  Lord!"  he  ejaculated,  and  turned  away  and 
ran  downstairs  and,  I  suppose,  back  into  the  street.  I  do 
not  know  where  he  came  from  and  I  never  saw  him  again. 
At  the  moment  I  accepted  him  as  the  phenomenon  of  a 
dream. 

But  his  intrusion  had  snatched  my  attention  from  the 
drama  of  the  open  rooms,  and  when  I  half-fearfully  re- 
turned to  it,  the  scene  was  over.  Miss  Whiting's  screaming 
defiance  had  changed  to  a  whimper,  and  I  heard  a  gruff, 
friendly  voice  saying:  "For  goodness'  sake,  put  something 
on,  my  girl,  or  you'll  catch  your  death  o'  cold  with  that 
broken  winder." 

I  became  aware  of  peace  and  at  the  same  time  of  the 
stirring  life  of  the  rest  of  the  house.  Up  above  a  door 
closed  quietly  as  if  some  listener  had  crept  back,  reas- 
sured. 

I  began  slowly  to  descend  the  stairs.  The  two  policemen 
and  Pferdminger  passed  me  in  the  hall,  and  the  policemen 
touched  their  helmets  to  me.  There  was  a  brief  confer- 
ence in  the  passage.  I  inferred  that  Pferdminger  was 
generous. 

Geddes  had  gone. 

Presently  two  of  the  Germans  came  in  together,  rather 
noisily.  My  door  was  open  and  they  looked  in  as  they 
passed  but  they  did  not  speak  to  me. 

A  few  minutes  later  I  heard  the  click  of  the  latchkey 
again,  and  this  time,  after  a  short  hesitation,  I  went  out 
into  the  hall.  I  felt  that  I  must  talk  to  some  one. 


130  HOUSE-MATES 


in 

I  found  the  man  whom  I  had  guessed  to  be  an  artist  turn- 
ing over  the  letters  that  had  come  by  the  last  post.  The 
gas  was  still  burning,  a  fact  that  marked  some  unusual  hap- 
pening in  the  house.  The  dark  man  looked  at  me  as  if  he 
understood  at  once  that  I  wanted  to  speak  to  him. 

"What's  happened  to  Pf erdminger  ?"  he  asked  glancing 
up  at  the  flickering  bat's-wing  gas-jet.  He  had  a  low, 
resonant  voice  that  I  found  very  pleasing. 

"There's  been  no  end  of  a  shindy,"  I  said,  leaning  against 
the  door-frame  of  my  room.  "The  police  have  been  in."  I 
tried  to  give  my  opening  announcement  a  dramatic  quality 
that  would  interest  him.  I  was  afraid  of  losing  his  at- 
tention. 

My  new  friend  whistled  softly,  a  low,  rich  note  that 
matched  the  tone  of  his  voice.  "Fishing?"  he  asked  briefly. 

I  understood  his  allusion.  "Not  exactly,"  I  told  him. 
"She  simply  asked  for  it.  She's  been  smashing  up  Pferd- 
minger's  property.  Didn't  you  notice  any  glass  on  the 
pavement  ?" 

He  shook  his  head.    "What  began  it?"  he  said. 

"Care  to  come  in  for  a  minute  or  two?"  I  suggested, 
and  as  he  nodded  we  heard  our  landlord  coming  up  from 
the  basement. 

A  strong  sense  of  excitement  was  still  intoxicating  me, 
and  I  welcomed  Pferdminger  almost  eagerly.  He  and  I 
had  just  come  through  peril  and  defeat  together,  and  I 
felt  a  new  sympathy  for  him. 

"Come  in  and  have  a  drink,"  I  said. 

For  one  moment  Pferdminger's  weak  eyes  had  looked 
past  me,  but  when  he  realised  that  my  attitude  was  en- 
tirely sympathetic,  the  defect  in  his  vision  righted  itself. 

"She  ees  mad,  that  woman,"  he  said,  and  then,  "You  haf 
toldt  Mr.  Eel?" 

I  inferred  "Hill."  "No,  not  yet,"  I  said,  "I  was  go- 
ing to." 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  ROW  131 

Pferdminger  shrugged  himself  comprehensively.  "She 
sink  I  die  afraid  of  her,"  he  remarked,  "but  eet  ees  not  so. 
I  tell  her  she  go.  Eet  ees  a  great  mistake  she  come  here 
already." 

"Tell  us  all  about  it,"  Hill  put  in,  and  we  went  into  my 
room.  Pferdminger  accepted  whiskey  with  an  air  of  cere- 
monious apology,  but  Hill  would  not  drink  anything. 

And  then  we  had  the  whole  story  very  dramatically  told 
but  with  little  suggestions  of  the  truth  peeping  out  between 
Pferdminger's  inflated  statement  of  his  pure  intentions.  He 
sat  by  the  table  with  a  great  effect  of  enjoying  my  entertain- 
ment. He  reminded  me  of  a  nonconformist  minister  pay- 
ing a  formal  "visit  to  a  wealthy  and  important  member  of 
his  congregation.  And  he  told  us  with  considerable  fluency 
and  much  reaching  out  after  idiom  the  full  history  of  his 
relations  with  Miss  Whiting  over  a  period  of  three  months. 

The  greater  part  of  his  story  was  quite  manifestly  un- 
true. His  pretence  of  innocence  concerning  the  nature  of 
Miss  Whiting's  profession  convinced  us  no  more  than 
his  boast  of  bullying.  He  was  undoubtedly  getting  an  ex- 
orbitant price  for  his  rooms,  and  Hill  and  I  inferred  that 
Miss  Whiting  had  come  to  "73"  as  a  refuge,  from  more 
suspicious  lodgings  in  which  she  had  had  difficulties.  For,  in 
effect,  one  of  Pferdminger's  boasts  was  nearly  true.  His 
house  had  been  respectable,  and,  now,  with  the  assurance 
of  my  plate  on  the  door,  he  had  meant,  if  possible,  to  re- 
gain his  honourable  name. 

"I  belief  her  when  she  pretend  ze  teeatre  profession,"  he 
repeated  many  times,  and  at  each  repetition  gave  himself 
away  by  adding,  "Vith  two  front  floors  not  let  at  all  how 
does  one  do  ozzerwise  ?" 

"Now,"  he  concluded,  "it  is  bad,  eh?  Ze  police  know — 
Zey  haf  zeir  eyes  on  me.  And  already  tonight  before  zey 
come,  I  haf  said  to  zat  damn  woman  'I  haf  you  no  more. 
You  are  too  bad  for  me.'  Andt  you  see,  yourself,  Mr. 
Hornby,  how  she  continue." 

He  drank  whiskey  with  eclat,  tiltimj  it  abruptly  down 
his  throat  as  if  afraid  that  it  might  touch  his  palate. 


HOUSE-MATES 

"To-morrow  she  go  out  wiz-  her  head  in  front,"  he  an- 
nounced, smacking  his  lips.  "I  put  aside  zree  weeks  of 
rent  zat  she  owe,  and  for  ze  window  and  ze  ozzer  sings,  I 
say  nossing.  But,"  he  got  to  his  feet,  "we  clear  ze  air  of 
her,  eh?"  And  then  he  clicked  his  heels  together,  bowed 
neatly  to  Hill  and  myself  in  turn,  and  made  a  very  creditable 
departure. 

Poor  little  Pferdminger,  he  was  not  at  all  a  bad  little 
man,  but  he  was  too  greedy.  It  was  his  love  of  cash  in 
hand  that  got  him  into  such  serious  trouble — that  and  his 
cowardice. 

IV 

I  did  not  want  Hill  to  go  and  I  began  to  talk  in  order 
to  keep  him.  I  had  touched,  for  the  first  time  in  my  ex- 
perience, the  crude  substance  of  life  and  all  my  thought 
was  still  tingling  with  the  excitement  of  that  contact. 

"She — this  Whiting  person,  I  mean — was  rather  mag- 
nificent in  a  way,"  I  said.  "Pferdminger  and  I  couldn't  do 
anything  with  her,  you  know." 

"Swear  much?"  Hill  asked. 

"Oh!  all  the  time,"  I  said,  "—badly,  but  it  wasn't  that." 
I  tried  to  realise  the  nature  of  the  power  she  had  exercised, 
and  failing,  continued,  "Of  course,  she  threatened  to  un- 
dress— at  least,  she  was  pretty  nearly  stark,  and  every  min- 
ute we  expected  the  last  rag  to  go.  I  don't  know  why  that 
should  have  frightened  us,  but  it  did.  It  did  me,  anyhow." 

Hill's  smile  was,  I  thought,  a  little  sardonic.  "You 
couldn't  face  the  primitive,"  he  suggested. 

"No,  I  suppose  not,"  I  agreed.  "She  was  most  in- 
fernally primitive — savage,  even." 

Hill  did  not  respond.  He  was  lying  back  in  my  best 
armchair,  apparently  attentive,  and  yet  unresponsive.  His 
dark  eyes  watched  me  continually,  but  I  could  not  be  sure 

whether  or  not  he  was  listening  with  any  interest  to  what 

I. ,  °  •/ 

said. 

"Does  all  this  bore  you?"  I  said. 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  ROW  133 

He  shook  his  head  but  did  not  rouse  himself.  "What 
about  the  girls  upstairs?"  he  asked.  "Were  they  there — 
or  Mrs.  Hargreave?" 

The  mention  of  the  "girls  upstairs"  confused  me.  I  was 
quite  unprepared  for  it ;  indeed,  the  one  girl  in  whom,  alone, 
I  was  interested,  had  occupied  such  a  remote,  distinctive 
place  in  my  mind,  that  I  had  not  once  thought  of  her  in 
relation  to  the  row  on  the  first  floor. 

"Mrs.  Hargreave?"  I  said,  instinctively  grasping  at  a 
cover  for  my  embarrassment.  "Who's  she?" 

"Stoutish  woman.    Wears  a  fur  coat,"  Hill  explained. 

"I  know  her  by  sight,"  I  said. 

"I  wonder  she  didn't  come  down,"  Hill  went  on ;  "if  only 
to  defend  Miss  Whiting  against  the  brutalities  of  you  two 
men." 

"Woman's  rights  sort  of  thing?"  I  asked. 

Hill  smiled  as  if  he  were  faintly  amused  at  my  ingenuous- 
ness. "You  don't  know  any  of  the  people  in  the  house?"  he 
remarked,  and  gave  his  sentence  the  tone  of  an  assertion 
that  required  endorsement. 

"No — not  yet,"  I  admitted. 

"What  made  you  come  here  ?" 

"Just  accident." 

"Any  clients,  yet?" 

"One  that  I  brought  with  me,"  I  said. 

Hill  nodded  and  yawned.  "I  must  go,"  he  said.  "I've 
got  a  notice  to  write  before  I  go  to  bed." 

"Are  you  a  dramatic  critic?"  I  asked. 

"Sometimes,"  he  admitted  carelessly. 

I  was  at  once  thrilled  and  astonished.  My  picture  of  a 
dramatic  critic  had  been  very  different  from  this. 

"But  why  to-night?"  I  asked.    "To-morrow's  Sunday." 

"I'm  never  much  good  in  the  morning,"  he  said.  "And 
I've  got  to  get  the  stuff  into  the  office  by  five  o'clock  to- 
morrow. They  make  up  the  paper  earlier  on  Sunday." 

He  yawned  again  and  got  up;  but  I  could  not  let  him 
go  before  he  had  answered  one  more  question. 

"Who  are  the  two  girls  upstairs?"  I  asked  with  an  elab- 


134  HOUSE-MATES 

orate  air  of  being  very  casually  interested.  "Isn't  this  rather 
a  doubtful  house  for  them  to  be  in?" 

"They're  trying  to  get  on  the  stage,"  Hill  replied.  "They 
were  in  "The  Furnace,"  that  spectacular  affair  at  the 
Symposium — only  ran  a  week,  you  know.  What's  the  mat- 
ter with  this  house?" 

"Well,  all  those  German  fellows  ..."  I  began. 

"Oh !  they  can  look  after  themselves  all  right,"  Hill  said, 
and  I  knew  that  he  referred  to  the  two  girls.  "Besides,"  he 
added  with  hi.s  rather  grim  smile,  "they're  on  the  top  floor 
next  door  to  Mrs.  Hargreave.  She's  a  dragon." 

"We  shall  be  quite  respectable  again  after  the  Whiting 
has  gone,"  I  remarked  by  way  of  concluding  the  conversa- 
tion. 

"You  think  Pf erdy  will  turn  her  out  ?"  Hill  said. 

"Rather.    Don't  you?"  I  returned. 

"Not  if  she  can  find  the  money  to  pay  up,"  Hill  said. 

He  nodded  casually  as  he  left  the  room. 


I  could  not  go  to  sleep  after  Hill  had  gone  and  as  I  paced 
up  and  down  my  sitting-room,  my  emotions  drew  to  a 
climax.  My  impressions  were  extraordinarily  vivid.  I  saw 
pictures,  all  a  little  brighter  and  sharper  than  reality;  pic- 
tures that  flashed  up  and  gave  me  a  sensation  of  enjoy- 
ment, but  had  no  kind  of  consequence  or  relation. 

The  person  of  Rose  Whiting  figured  very  prominently 
in  that  panorama ;  and  I  saw  her  both  glorified  and  debased ; 
alternately  as  a  presentation  of  beauty  and  vice.  The  sight 
of  her  nakedness  that  I  had  feared  so  much  now  came  to 
me  robbed  of  conventional  suggestions.  I  saw  her  mag- 
nificent as  a  statue  in  alabaster.  And  then  I  would  see 
her  face  above,  framed  in  darkness,  a  face  wreathed  in 
symbols  of  terror  and  disgust,  as  if  she  fought  weakly 
against  her  own  damnation. 

I  made  no  effort,  at  first,  to  resist  the  coming  of  those 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  ROW  135 

visions  and  for  a  time  I  found  a  keen  pleasure  in  the 
magical  brilliance  of  my  effortless  imaginings.  But  very  soon 
I  began  to  experience  a  kind  of  surfeit,  and  my  repugnance 
grew  until  I  felt  an  actual  physical  sickness,  and  my  visions 
took  on  that  haunting  quality  which  comes  to  one  in  fever. 

I  struggled  then  as  if  I  were  fighting  for  the  control  of  my 
reason.  I  was  very  much  aware  of  my  duality;  and  pres- 
ently as  I  began  more  successfully  to  defend  myself  against 
the  invasion  of  the  single  image  which  had  nearly  obsessed 
me,  my  visions  took  another  shape. 

I  remembered  the  night  of  my  father's  death,  and  my 
walk  home  with  the  little  deformed  doctor  through  the 
moonlight ;  and  more  particularly  I  recalled  the  clearness  of 
my  recognition  that  there  were  two  Wilfred  Hornbys. 

I  wanted  to  pause  and  consider  that  curious  phenomenon, 
but  I  was  incapable  of  deliberate,  consequent  reflection.  A 
new  set  of  images  had  been  evoked,  and  they  carried  me 
down  a  long  stream  of  impression  which  seemed  to  relate 
all  those  moments  of  ecstasy  that  had  come  to  me  in  such 
queer  forms.  I  experienced  again  the  poised  expectation 
that  I  had  known  when  I  saw  the  glory  of  the  purple 
clematis,  the  cathedral  of  Medboro'  half  drowned  in  the 
mists,  or  the  silver  and  ebony  relief  of  the  bright  dawn  in  the 
Marylebone  Road.  And  I  tried  desperately  to  remain 
poised.  It  seemed  to  me  that  now,  at  last,  I  should  be  able 
to  peer  over  the  edge  of  life  and  see  once,  clearly,  the 
beauty  that  lay  beyond. 

I  sat  down  in  my  armchair  and  pressed  my  hands  to  my 
eyes.  I  suppose  I  must  have  fallen  asleep  almost  in- 
stantly. 

. 

VI 

The  waking  was  a  very  dreary  business.  I  was  cold  and 
cramped;  and  when  I  tried  to  get  to  my  feet  I  collapsed 
into  my  chair  again ;  my  right  foot  was  a  senseless,  useless 
lump  of  clay,  and  I  had  to  endure  the  tantalising  pain  of 
"pins  and  needles"  before  I  could  stand.  The  time  was  a 


136  HOUSE-MATES 

quarter  to  five,  and  my  bedroom  and  my  bed  felt  cold  and 
damp;  but  I  was  soon  asleep  again. 

When  I  awoke  for  the  second  time,  Pferdminger  was  in 
my  room.  He  often  waited  upon  me,  himself,  a  mark,  I 
believe,  of  his  particular  regard  for  the  dignity  I  had  con- 
ferred upon  his  house. 

"You  sleep  a  long  time  zis  morning,"  he  remarked,  as 
he  struggled  with  the  Venetian  blind. 

"What  time  is  it?"  I  asked.  I  had  realised  at  once  that 
my  landlord  and  I  were  on  a  new  footing,  but  I  felt  self- 
conscious  and  awkward.  The  incidents  of  the  night  before 
seemed  a  trifle  garish  and  unreal  in  the  light  of  morning. 

He  told  me  that  it  was  half-past  nine,  and  added  that 
it  was  a  fine  day.  He  had  brought  me  my  hot  water,  and 
now  pottered  uncertainly  about  the  room  as  if  he  had  still 
some  further  service  to  offer. 

I  sat  up  in  bed  and  tried  to  be  decently  friendly. 

"How  is  Miss  Whiting  this  morning?"  I  asked. 

Pferdminger  shook  his  head  gravely.  "Not  veil  at  all," 
he  said.  "She  was  certainly  mad  last  night.  But  zees  morn- 
ing eet  ees  all  ozzervise.  So!  She  have  apologize  and  say 
she  pay  everysing.  Eet  ees  perhaps  unfortunate  for  some 
vays,  but  I  cannot  .  .  ."  he  could  not  find  a  word  suf- 
ficiently forcible  to  express  the  brutal  ejection  of  Miss 
Whiting,  and  had  resource  to  a  gesture  which  certainly  sug- 
gested that  considerable  force  would  be  required.  "No,  I 
cannot  do  so  if  she  pay  everysing,"  he  concluded. 

"You  might  give  her  notice,"  I  put  in. 

"Oh!  noteece!  Vat  is  zat?"  Pferdminger  returned 
warmly.  "She  snap  her  hands  at  my  noteece.  And  eet  ees 
vinter  already." 

I  guessed  that  his  last  remark  referred  less  to  the  in- 
humanity of  turning  Miss  Whiting  out  into  the  imaginary 
cold  (it  was  a  particularly  bright  clear  morning  at  the  end 
of  October)  than  to  the  difficulty  of  replacing  her  at  that 
time  of  year. 

"Oh!  well,  as  long  as  she  behaves  herself,"  I  remarked 
cheerfully. 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  ROW  137 

"Oh !  she  behave  herself,  now,"  Pferdminger  replied  with 
intense  conviction.  "No  fear,  now,  zat  she  behave  not  her- 
self. She  fear  ze  police.  Zey  noteece  her  always  after 
zis.  She  die  afraid  of  zem,  now." 

I  could  see  that  he  had  supreme  faith  in  that  threat  of 
police  interference  so  far  as  the  future  safety  of  his  own 
household  goods  was  concerned. 

"You're  not  afraid  that  the  police  will  be  down  on  you?" 
I  asked. 

Pferdminger's  left  eye  suddenly  became  lost  in  abstrac- 
tion. "Zey  know  I  have  always  the  most  respectable  ten- 
ants," he  said.  "For  last  night?  Zat  was  unlucky.  It  hap- 
pen so  to  any  one.  Eh?" 

I  wondered  how  Hill  had  known  so  well  that  our  land- 
lord would  change  his  mind.  On  the  previous  night  he 
would,  I  am  sure,  gladly  have  seen  Miss  Whiting  carried 
out  on  a  stretcher.  .  .  . 

Not  until  I  had  had  breakfast  did  I  become  aware  that 
the  events  of  the  night  had  had  some  very  strong  effect 
upon  me. 

My  first  impression  was  that  the  lightness  of  my  mood 
was  due  to  the  change  of  weather.  It  was  one  of  those 
still,  clear  October  days  that  come  in  late  autumn  and  charm 
us  with  an  enchanted  parody  of  summer.  The  night  frost 
had  cleansed  and  re- vivified  the  London  air;  and  the  thin, 
sweet  sunlight  that  played  on  the  houses  opposite  seemed 
to  bring  the  sharp  scent  of  the  country  into  my  sitting-room. 
I  could  see  the  stubble  fields  still  wet  with  frost,  and  hear 
the  gentle  whisper  of  dead  leaves  that  fell  softly  through 
the  crisp  foliage  of  the  glowing  beech  woods.  I  heard  the 
clamour  of  rooks  and  smelt  the  faint  sharpness  of  the 
pinched  hedges.  I  saw  the  trail  of  "old  men's  beard,"  still 
green  in  the  shadows,  and  the  brightness  of  the  lingering 
sloes  and  blackberries.  And  surely  there  would  still  be 
a  few  late  flies  low  over  the  river,  and  the  swirl  of  a  chub 
feeding. 

But  when  the  keen  suggestions  of  the  country  gave  place 
to  my  recognition  of  town  surroundings,  the  sense  of  pleas- 


138  HOUSE-MATES 

ure  and  anticipation  still  remained  with  me.  I  remem- 
bered my  new  freedom.  I  need  not  go  to  church,  nor 
endure  the  stuffy  ceremony  of  dinner  at  Ken  Lodge.  I 
should  not  be  called  upon  to  chafe  through  a  long  after- 
noon with  Gladys. 

And  still  my  feeling  of  lightness  and  vitality  was  not 
accounted  for,  and  I  began  to  realise  that  a  load  of  resent- 
ment and  oppression  had  been  lifted  from  my  mind.  I  no 
longer  nourished  any  animosity  against  the  girl  who  had 
snubbed  me  on  the  doorstep.  I  was  sure,  now,  that  she 
would  sooner  or  later  forgive  me  for  my  stupidity. 

I  walked  over  to  the  window  and  looked  out  with  a  new 
ease.  I  was  not  afraid  any  more  of  my  house-mates.  I 
would  have  nodded  gladly  to  the  little  white-haired  Ger- 
man in  his  frock-coat  and  bowler. 

Last  night  the  slow  process  of  my  development  had  been 
wonderfully  completed.  I  had  come  out  of  my  shell.  I 
had  suddenly  realised  that  it  is  easier  and  far  more  in- 
spiriting to  love  than  to  cherish  a  timid,  shrinking  animosity. 


VII 

Yet  I  do  not  wish  to  convey  the  impression  that  there 
was  anything  miraculous  in  my  apparent  change  of  mind. 
The  longing  for  some  spiritual  enlargement  had  always 
been  with  me,  but  all  the  forces  of  my  training,  all  the 
models  of  my  life  had  withheld  me  from  any  expression. 
I  was,  I  still  am,  a  plastic,  adaptable  creature,  and  I  had 
sedulously  modelled  and  enthroned  the  one  ideal  that  had 
always  been  put  before  me.  The  profession  of  becoming 
a  gentleman  had  been  the  idol  I  was  taught  to  worship, 
and  none  had  ever  suggested  to  me  that  my  idol  lacked 
comprehensiveness.  Good  form,  the  esteem  of  my  contem- 
poraries, a  little  fame  and  position,  and  the  getting  of  as 
much  money  as  I  could  honestly  acquire,  these  were  the 
sole  objects  of  social  life.  Behind  them  lay  the  necessity 
of  insuring  peace  throughout  eternity  by  the  careful  obser- 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  ROW  139 

vation  of  certain  ritual  formalities.  No  one  had  ever  gone 
deeper  than  that  with  me;  no  one  had  ever  talked  to  me 
of  a  beauty  that  was  not  stereotyped. 

My  sudden  enlargement  had  been  brought  about  by  in- 
tense nervous  excitement  and  a  new  sight  of  life — life 
unrestrained,  passionate,  elemental.  I  had  been  ready,  and 
the  freedom  of  my  loneliness  had  helped  to  release  me. 

But  there  was  another  factor  which,  however  unrealised 
that  Sunday  morning,  was  perhaps  the  most  potent  of  all. 

For  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  was  beautifully,  won- 
derfully in  love. 


VII 
MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE 


I  COULD  not  remain  quietly  in  my  rooms  that  morning. 
The  most  reasonable  alternative  would  have  been  to 
take  bus  or  train  out  into  the  country ;  to  enjoy  in  fact  what 
I  had  already  tasted  in  imagination.  But  I  was  at  the 
mercy  of  my  new  craving  for  life.  The  thought  of  a  lonely 
day  in  the  country  was  repugnant  to  me.  I  wanted  to  talk 
to  a  friend,  and  my  first  idea  was  that  I  would  go  over  to 
West  Kensington  and  see  Geddes — I  could  tell  him  of 
the  strange  adventure  of  the  night  and  of  the  effect  it  had 
had  upon  me.  A  little  reflection,  however,  soon  turned 
me  from  that  project.  Geddes  would  not  be  interested; 
he  would  cut  short  my  narrative  with  his  advice  to  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  other  people  in  the  house;  and 
then  complete  his  interrupted  specification  of  that  con- 
founded fire-proof  partition.  No,  I  did  not  want  Geddes's 
companionship. 

Nor  did  the  contemplation  of  an  afternoon  with  Horton- 
Smith  appeal  to  me  just  then.  He  and  I  knew  as  much 
as  we  should  ever  know  about  each  other.  It  was  little 
enough,  but  I  could  not  conceive  of  any  deeper  intimacy 
between  us.  If  I  told  him  of  last  night's  adventure  he 
would  ask  me  ribald  questions  about  Rose  Whiting,  ques- 
tions that  would  not  touch  even  the  surface  of  my  inter- 
est. He  would  understand  me  no  better  than  my  Cousin 
Gladys  would  have  done.  Indeed,  I  could  not  understand 
myself. 

I  felt  a  great  impulse  to  talk  to  some  one,  but  I  could 

140 


MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE     141 

not  imagine  a  conversation  that  would  satisfy  me,  nor,  at 
the  moment,  picture  a  possible  companion.  I  was  not  at 
all  certain  that  my  craving  was  not  a  symptom  of  mere 
foolishness  that  ought  to  be  drowned  in  work.  Possibly 
the  fact  that  it  was  Sunday  morning  alone  interfered  with 
me  and  the  resolution  to  work.  I  had  never,  then,  worked 
on  a  Sunday;  and  I  had  a  queer,  superstitious  qualm 
about  it,  that  even  now  I  have  not  entirely  conquered. 

And  when,  at  last,  I  boldly  conceived  the  notion  of 
going  upstairs  to  see  Hill,  I  understood  that  while  this  was 
by  far  the  most  attractive  plan  I  had  yet  made,  it  still 
lacked. the  air  of  promising  a  perfect  satisfaction.  More- 
over, I  was  horribly  shy  of  intruding  my  company  upon 
him.  If  I  had  suffered  some  change  of  condition  in  the 
past  twelve  hours,  the  embryo  had  emerged  bearing  the 
authentic  stamp  of  the  old  Wilfred  Hornby.  I  had  the 
capacity  for  freer  movement,  but  I  was  precisely  the  same 
chicken  that  had  lain  cramped  in  its  shell  for  twenty- 
eight  years. 

Nevertheless,  the  desire  to  go  up  and  see  Hill  increased 
as  I  considered  the  possibility.  I  could  not  say  why,  but 
the  idea  of  going  upstairs  had  the  quality  of  an  adven- 
ture. The  thought  of  it  enticed  me  like  some  delicious 
temptation,  and  when  Pferdminger  came  to  clear  away 
my  breakfast,  I  asked  him  boldly  as  to  the  exact  location 
of  Hill's  room. 

Pferdminger  was  evidently  suspicious  of  my  intention 
and  flew  his  unusual  indication  of  nervousness.  He  could 
never  have  become  a  successful  criminal  with  that  weak- 
ness of  the  left  eye ;  it  betrayed  him  on  the  slightest  occa- 
sion. He  prevaricated,  now,  by  pretending  that  Hill  had 
gone  out 

I  contradicted  that  flatly.  Opposition  increased  my  long- 
ing for  Hill's  company.  But  when  I  had  bullied  Pferd- 
minger into  giving  me  the  required  information,  and  was 
actually  standing  outside  Hill's  door,  I  should  certainly 
have  gone  down  again  without  knocking  if  he  had  not  called 
out  from  within  the  room. 


142  HOUSE-MATES 

"Hal-lo!"  he  said  with  a  little  drop  in  the  second  sylla- 
ble. I  thought  his  hail  was  touched  with  a  note  of  ex- 
asperation. 

"Oh!  hallo!"  he  repeated  in  another  tone  when  I  had 
opened  the  door  and  showed  myself.  "It's  you,  is  it?  Come 
in.  I  thought  it  was  Lippmann — the  stout  chap,  you  know." 

I  mentally  placed  Lippmann  as  one  of  the  three  Germans 
who  turned  eastwards  every  morning. 

Hill's  room  was  a  litter  of  books.  Most  of  them  were 
untidily  stacked  round  the  walls;  but  there  must  have 
been  nearly  a  hundred  volumes,  scattered  about  on  the  bed, 
the  table,  the  two  cane  chairs  and  the  chest  of  drawers. 

"I'm  afraid  I'm  interrupting  you,"  I  said,  "but  I  thought 
— I  wanted  ..."  I  found  that  I  had  no  sort  of  reason- 
able excuse  for  coming. 

"You're  not,"  Hill  said,  looking  at  me  with  a  rather 
whimsical  smile.  "Come  in.  Have  you  seen  Pferdminger 
this  morning?"  He  got  up  and  offered  me  the  wicker 
armchair,  and  when  I  refused  that,  cleared  one  of  the 
cane-seated  chairs  for  me  by  transferring  a  pile  of  books 
to  the  already  overweighted  table. 

"I've  been  sorting  out  a  few  books  to  sell,"  he  explained. 
"They  accumulate  at  an  unholy  rate,  and  it's  too  much 
bother  to  do  'em  up." 

"You  certainly  haven't  much  room  for  them  here,"  I 
said.  In  my  innocence  I  believed  that  he  was  sacrificing 
his  treasures  and  attempting  to  conceal  his  poverty. 

He  apparently  understood  the  intention  of  my  polite 
agreement. 

"All  review  books — practically,  you  know,"  he  said. 
"Muck,  for  the  most  part,  not  worth  keeping.  I  get  the 
bookseller  to  come  up  with  a  sack  now  and  again." 

I  believe  at  the  moment  I  was  chiefly  astounded  by  the 
thought  that  he  could  have  read  and  reviewed  so  many 
works.  The  accumulation  there  in  his  room  seemed  to  me 
a  life's  undertaking. 

I  began  to  ask  him  ingenuous  questions  about  this  un- 
known business  of  reviewing.  I  had  had  some  vague, 


MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE    143 

incurious  notion  that  critics  or  reviewers — I  appreciated 
no  distinction  between  the  two  titles — were  all  literary  men 
of  considerable  attainment,  men  who  made  the  welfare  of 
literature  the  chief  concern  of  their  lives.  Hill  exposed 
the  foolishness  of  that  idea  in  a  sentence. 

"There  are  over  three  thousand  books  published  every 
year,"  he  said,  "and  not  a  dozen  of  them  worth  serious 
attention ;  but  most  of  'em  are  reviewed." 

"Why?"  I  asked. 

"To  keep  the  publishers'  advertisements,"  Hill  told  me, 
but  he  had  to  enter  into  a  fuller  account  of  the  commercial 
aspects  of  journalism  before  I  could  appreciate  that  simple 
explanation. 

"It  makes  one  see  literature  in  rather  a  bad  light,"  was 
my  final  comment.  His  statement  depressed  me.  I  had 
always  thought  it  rather  a  wonderful  thing  to  write  a 
book. 

"It's  a  trade,"  Hill  said ;  "and  it  employs  a  lot  of  people." 

"Reviewers?"  I  put  in. 

Hill  smiled.  "And  the  staff  of  about  eighty  publishers, 
and  the  printers  and  binders,  and  the  circulating  libraries, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  paper-makers  and  so  on,"  he  re- 
minded me. 

"But  who  reads  them  all?"  I  asked. 

"God  knows,"  Hill  said. 

We  were  still  on  the  subject  of  making  books  when  some 
one  tapped  lightly  at  the  door. 

"Come  in,  Helen,"  Hill  called  out,  and  then,  as  the  door 
opened,  he  got  up  and  said :  "I've  elected  a  new  member  of 
the  Sunday  morning  club— our  prize  lodger." 

"Oh !"  replied  "Helen"  on  a  note  of  apprehension. 

She  stood  immediately  inside  the  door  and  looked  at  me 
with  frowning  disapproval,  her  head  ducked  a  little  for- 
ward, and  with  something  in  her  pose  that  suggested  an 
angry  hen.  She  was,  indeed,  blocking  the  entrance,  and 
I  knew  perfectly  well  that  "the  other  one"  was  just  out- 
side. I  had  hardly  realised  until  that  moment  how  com- 


144  HOUSE-MATES 

pletely  I  had  come  to  regard  her  as  being  "the  other 
one,"  in  a  class  apart  from  all  the  rest  of  mankind. 

"Look  here,  I'll  go  now,"  I  said  to  Hill. 

It  may  sound  absurd,  but  I  was  actually  trembling  with 
fear.  I  felt  that  I  simply  could  not  dare  to  meet  that 
other  one. 

"Nonsense!"  Hill  returned,  and  then  he  turned  to  the 
girl  by  the  door  and  said :  "Come  in,  Helen.  Isn't  Judith 
there?  I'll  tell  you  all  about  that  rotten  play  I  did  last 
night." 

Helen  came  a  little  further  into  the  room,  still  brooding. 
"I  don't  suppose,  Mr.  Hornby,"  she  began,  and  she  no  doubt 
finished  her  sentence,  but  I  did  not  hear  the  rest  of  it,  for 
Judith  had  followed  her  friend  and  had  looked  at  me 
with,  I  thought,  the  faintest  suggestion  of  a  smile. 

I  remembered  then  with  a  flush  of  horrible  abasement 
all  my  sulky  projects  for  recrimination.  The  opportunity 
had  come,  now.  I  could  throw  up  my  head  and  return  the 
snub  she  had  given  me  a  week  ago.  But  never  did  any 
man  feel  more  abject  than  I  felt  at  that  moment. 

I  dropped  my  eyes  like  a  shy  school-girl.  All  my  being 
seemed  to  have  suddenly  run  into  a  mould  of  the  weakest 
humility. 

ii 

Hill  was  laughing,  not  at  me  but  at  the  mouse-coloured 
young  woman  he  addressed  as  Helen;  and  my  embarrass- 
ment was  by  no  means  relieved  when  I  discovered  that  he 
knew  the  whole  story  of  my  attempt  to  accost  the  two  girls 
on  the  doorstep. 

"Don't  harbour  resentment,  Helen,"  he  was  saying.  "Mr. 
Hornby  was  only  wanting  to  be  elected  a  member  of  our 
club." 

Helen  had  sat  down  on  the  foot  of  the  bed.  Her  head 
still  drooped,  sulkily,  and  she  did  not  answer  at  once.  Then 
she  glanced  quickly  at  me  with  a  look  of  sullen  dislike. 

"There  are  different  ways  of  doing  things,"  she  mut- 
tered. 


MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE    145 

"Tell  'em  your  intentions  were  quite  innocent,  Hornby," 
Hill  said,  turning  to  me. 

But  I  did  not  wish  to  make  my  excuses  on  those  grounds. 
I  should  have  liked  to  tell  them  the  whole  story  of  that 
Sunday  morning.  I  held  the  mistaken  conviction  that  if 
I  could  but  explain  myself  fully  and  truthfully,  every  one — 
even  the  moody  Helen — would  sympathise  with  me.  No 
doubt  your  average  criminal  labours  under  the  same 
delusion. 

"Frightfully  sorry,"  I  mumbled.  "Rotten  mistake  of 
mine,  that  was  all."  I  dared  not  look  at  Judith,  who  was 
now  sitting  by  her  friend  on  the  bed. 

"You  don't  mean  to  pretend  you  thought  you  knew  us," 
Helen  snapped. 

"It  wasn't  that  ..."  I  began,  as  if  I  were  going  to  ex- 
plain exactly  what  it  was. 

"Well,  then  ...   ?"    Helen  prompted  me  remorselessly. 

"Better  make  a  clean  breast  of  it  and  get  it  over,"  Hill 
added,  smiling  encouragement.  "The  way  I  had  the  story, 
you  seem  to  have  broken  the  table  of  the  commandments 
on  the  front  steps.  Miss  Whiting's  little  affair  last  night 
was  a  trifle  in  comparison." 

And  then,  as  so  often  happens,  the  whole  drift  of  our 
conversation  was  instantly  directed  into  another  channel. 

"Oh!  Mr.  Hill,  what  did  happen  last  night?"  Judith  asked 
eagerly.  "We  do  so  want  to  know.  We  came  out  on  to 
the  landing,  but  Mrs.  Hargreave  wouldn't  let  us  come 
down." 

"Better  ask  Hornby,"  Hill  said.  "He  was  there.  It  was 
all  over  when  I  came  in." 

"I  thought  I  heard  your  voice,"  Helen  put  in  with  an 
accusing  look  at  me,  and  I  realised  that  I  was,  now,  under 
suspicion  of  another  offence  not  less  heinous  than  the 
first.  I  felt  that  this  time  I  must  be  very  convincing. 

"I  didn't  hear  the  beginning  of  it,"  I  said.  "I  had  a  friend 
with  me  downstairs." 

It  was  not  a  fortunate  opening.  I  saw  a  clear  indica- 
tion of  this  woman  Helen's  suspicion  of  me  when  I  men- 


146  HOUSE-MATES 

tioned  the  word  friend.  She  had  made  up  her  mind  that 
I  was  a  professional  philogynist,  and  she  was  as  deter- 
mined as  a  savage  hen,  fully  prepared  to  defend  the  pre- 
cious chicken  she  had  adopted. 

"I — I  wanted  him  to  come  up,  too,"  I  went  on,  address- 
ing Hill,  "but  he's  one  of  those  fellows  who  is  frightened 
to  death  of  a  row.  He's  always  afraid  he'll  get  implicated 
in  some  way." 

The  sound  of  my  own  voice  gave  me  confidence,  and  I 
was  glad  to  be  able  to  talk  directly  to  Hill.  I  wanted 
some  such  opportunity  as  this  to  give  me  a  chance  to — 
there  is  no  other  phrase  that  gives  quite  the  same  effect — 
to  "show  off."  All  male  animals  do  it.  Small  boys  of 
seven  will  become  boisterous  and  foolish  when  a  little  girl 
comes  into  their  game. 

"Architect,  too?"  Hill  asked  with  a  friendly  wish  to 
help  my  explanation. 

I  nodded.  "We  were  in  the  same  office  together  in  Lin- 
coln's Inn,"  I  said.  "Well,  we  heard  some  kind  of  row 
going  on  and  I  went  up  to  see  if — if  I  could  help.  Pferd- 
minger  sounded  absolutely  murderous." 

I  glanced  at  Helen,  and  saw  the  signal  of  her  incredulity 
in  the  lift  of  her  thick  eyebrows — she  had  queer  eyebrows, 
with  strong,  untidy  brown  hairs  that  grew  irregularly.  It 
was  a  surprise  to  see  her  dull,  mouse-coloured  eyes  peering 
out  from  under  that  thatch. 

Her  obstinate  suspicions  confused  me.  I  found  it  very 
difficult  to  be  convincing  while  every  word  I  said  was 
weighed  with  such  a  jealous  distrust. 

"His  property  was  getting  smashed,  you  see,"  I  said, 
staring  my  defiance  at  her. 

"Well,  what  happened  ?"  she  asked,  and  her  friend  helped 
me  by  adding: 

"We  heard  the  smashing  going  on." 

"The  whole  street  heard  it,"  I  said.  "That  was  what 
fetched  the  police  in.  She  chucked  a  vase  through  the 
window." 

"Why  didn't  Mr.  Pferdminger  stop  her?"  asked  Helen, 


MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE    147 

pronouncing  our  landlord's  name  in  the  English  way  with 
a  thick  "er"  sound  and  a  soft  "g." 

"Pferdminger,"  I  repeated,  correcting  the  pronunciation. 
"Oh!  he  was  afraid  of  her." 

"Were  you  afraid,  too?"  she  retorted. 

Her  remark  suggested  a  change  of  attitude,  but  her  new 
attack  was  more  difficult  to  repulse.  I  had  already  told 
Hill  that  I  had  been  afraid,  and  I  had  a  foolish  disinclina- 
tion, now,  to  repeat  the  chief  reason  of  Rose  Whiting's 
power  to  intimidate  us. 

"She  was  so — so  primitive,"  I  tried,  snatching  at  the  word 
I  had  used  the  night  before. 

"She  swore  dreadfully,  didn't  she?"  Judith  put  in. 

I  dared  to  glance  at  her  and  saw  that  she  was  leaning 
forward,  listening  with  a  simple  ardour  to  my  halting, 
undramatic  account  of  the  highly  dramatic  incident. 

"I'm  telling  it  very  badly,"  I  apologised. 

Hill  came  to  my  rescue.  "It  seems  that  Miss  Whiting 
had  come  down  to  a  single  garment,"  he  explained;  "and 
she  was  threatening  them  to  drop  that  any  moment.  And, 
you  see,  they  were  a  trifle  too  civilised  to  risk  it." 

I  believe  I  was  the  only  one  of  the  four  who  felt  really 
uncomfortable,  although  Helen's  air  of  indifference  was 
rather  too  deliberate.  She  pursed  her  lips  with  an  expres- 
sion of  contempt  and  murmured  something  that  might  have 
been  "poor  thing,"  or  possibly  "poor  things." 

"It  was  jolly  awkward,  anyway/'  I  mumbled,  and  I  have 
been  told  since  by  one  of  the  other  listeners  that  I  looked 
like  "a  rather  nice  old  maid  at  a  musical  comedy."  I  can 
quite  believe  it.  I  knew  that  there  was  no  reason  for 
my  embarrassment,  but  I  could  not  appear  at  ease.  Ken 
Lodge  would  have  been  outraged;  Horton-Smith  and  his 
kind  would  have  made  some  lewd  joke ;  and  these  differing 
expressions  of  the  same  attitude  were  all  the  examples  I 
was  familiar  with. 

Hill  evidently  found  my  prudishness  amusing. 

"Our  new  friend  Hornby  is  a  model  of  respectability," 


148  HOUSE-MATES 

he  said ;  "and  our  ambitious  landlord  looks  to  him  to  bring 
salvation  to  73  Keppel  Street." 

I  was  glad  that  the  conversation  should  take  that  turn; 
also,  I  was  flattered  by  the  kindly  tone  of  Hill's  chaff. 

"The  trouble  is,"  I  said,  "that  Pferdminger  doesn't  back 
me  up." 

The  interrogative  of  Hill's  eyebrows  encouraged  me  to 
explain  my  remark.  He  was,  undoubtedly,  doing  his  best 
to  help  me.  But  before  I  could  announce  my  little  piece 
of  news  as  to  Miss  Whiting's  reinstatement,  the  door  opened 
and  the  woman  Hill  had  indicated  as  Mrs.  Hargreave 
came  in. 

"I  heard  you  all  talking,  so  I  didn't  knock,"  she  said, 
looking  at  me;  and  then  went  on:  "You  are  Mr.  Hornby, 
aren't  you?  I've  seen  you  working  at  your  window." 

I  bowed. 

"There's  still  one  chair  left,"  Hill  suggested.  "Hornby 
has  been  telling  us  about  the  row  last  night." 

Mrs.  Hargreave  sat  down  and  leaned  her  elbows  on  the 
table.  She  was  a  handsome  woman,  but  even  on  that  first 
morning  I  was  puzzled  by  something  that  blurred  the  intel- 
ligence of  her  face — I  do  not  know  whether  it  was  that  her 
eyes  stared  too  fanatically,  or  if  it  were  that  her  manner 
and  general  expression  hinted  at  too  great  a  worship  of 
the  autocratic  ideal.  She  was  wearing  the  familiar  fur  coat 
as  a  dressing  gown;  and  that,  also,  helped  to  produce  the 
effect  of  a  boasting  idiosyncrasy. 

"I've  been  talking  to  the  unlucky  girl  this  morning,"  she 
said,  taking  up  Hill's  last  remark.  "I  heard  how  she  was 
badgered  and  bullied  first  by  Pferdminger  and  Mr.  Hornby, 
and  then  by  the  police;  and  I've  advised  her  to  resist  any 
attempt  at  ejection." 

I  was  too  staggered  by  this  version  of  the  affair  to  do 
more  "than  stare  my  amazement,  but  Hill  chuckled  as  if 
he  were  quite  prepared  for  new  aspects  from  Mrs. 
Hargreave. 

"I  heard  that  Miss  Whiting  did  all  the  bullying  in  the 
first  instance,"  he  said. 


MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE     149 

"How  else  could  she  protect  herself?"  Mrs.  Hargreave 
returned. 

"Against  Pferdminger's  modest  request  for  rent?" 

"Against  his  criminally  extortionate  charges,"  Mrs.  Har- 
greave corrected  him.  "It's  simply  blackmail,"  she  went 
on ;  "he  squeezes  her  for  every  penny  he  can.  .  .  ." 

She  was  fairly  under  way,  sitting  very  upright,  and 
her  hard  blue  eyes  stared  defiance  of  an  imaginary  audience 
far  larger  than  the  small  group  of  people  collected  in  that 
little  room.  But  Hill  would  not  permit  the  argument  to 
become  a  lecture. 

"Oh !  look  at  it  another  way,"  he  put  in  quickly.  "Pf erdy 
has  to  take  risks  on  the  Whiting,  and  her  extra  rent  is 
the  premium  she  has  to  pay.  When  he  gets  a  respectable 
lodger  like  Hornby,  he  can  afford  to  let  him  have  the  rooms 
cheap." 

"But  he  wants  her  to  go,"  I  said. 

"Not  he,"  snapped  Mrs.  Hargreave.  "When  I  offered 
to  pay  him  this  morning,  he  simply  grovelled." 

"Are  you  really  going  to  pay  for  her?"  Helen  asked  with 
great  intensity. 

"As  a  protest  against  persecution,"  Mrs.  Hargreave  said. 

At  the  moment  I  did  not  believe  her.  Her  circumstances, 
no  less  than  the  peculiarity  of  her  present  attire,  suggested 
that,  whatever  her  position  had  once  been,  she  was  not 
now  in  a  position  to  pay  the  £20  which  I  had  mentally  fig- 
ured as  the  probable  amount  of  Miss  Whiting's  debt  to 
Pferdminger  by  his  calculation;  he  would  certainly  not 
underestimate  the  value  of  the  cheap  German  porcelain  she 
had  smashed.  Moreover,  I  had  been  distinctly  offended  by 
Mrs.  Hargreave's  first  remarks. 

"I  should  have  thought  it  would  be  better  to  let  her  go," 
I  said. 

"Why?"  Mrs.  Hargreave  asked  threateningly. 

"Oh!  well,"  I  said  and  shrugged  my  shoulders.  I  felt 
that  my  reasons  could  not  be  discussed  in  that  company. 

"Oh!  well,"  Mrs.  Hargreave  repeated  with  a  smile  and, 
as  I  thought,  a  surprising  change  of  manner.  Her  imita- 


150  HOUSE-MATES 

tion  of  me  was,  I  must  admit,  quite  reasonably  successful. 
"It's  always  oh!  well,  isn't  it?"  she  continued.  "That  is 
the  comfortable  English  attitude  to  all  these  things;  the 
old  maid's  attitude  to  everything  that  she  knows  nothing 
about,  and  is  afraid  to  enquire  into.  There  are  so  many 
old-maidish  men  of  your  type,  Mr.  Hornby.  I  wonder 
whether  you  are  only  ignorant  or  really  pig-headed." 

I  was  on  the  verge  of  losing  my  temper  when  I  .suddenly 
became  aware  that  "Judith"  was  looking  at  me  with  some- 
thing very  like  pity  in  her  face.  And  then  I  realised  that 
I  was  behaving  like  a  fool;  that  in  many  ways  I  had  al- 
ways behaved  like  a  fool,  wilfully  shutting  my  eyes  to 
one  side  of  life  and  congratulating  myself  on  my  blindness. 
The  realisation  came  to  me  almost  as  my  visions  had  come ; 
as  a  piece  of  strange  esoteric  knowledge  bewilderingly  true 
and  real ;  or  as  if  for  one  tiny  instant  something  had  opened 
and  I  had  seen  through. 

in 

"Only  ignorant,"  I  said  on  the  impulse  of  the  moment. 
"At  least,  I  hope  so." 

Mrs.  Hargreave  looked  at  me  with  a  hint  of  approval. 
"You  seem  to  have  a  capacity  for  looking  about  you,  at 
any  rate,"  she  said,  and  went  on:  "So  you  deny  that  you 
bullied  Rose  Whiting  last  night?" 

"She  bullied  us,"  I  returned. 

"But  you  meant  to  bully  her  when  you  went  upstairs," 
she  insisted. 

I  looked  back  at  my  emotions  of  the  night  before  and 
found  no  trace  of  any  impulse  to  domineer. 

"No,"  I  said,  and  as  I  spoke  it  came  to  me  that  in  my 
experience  the  bullies  had  all  been  women.  Gladys  had 
nagged  me;  my  aunt  had  kept  Uncle  David  in  subjection 
by  the  constant  threat  of  her  ill-health;  Miss  Whiting  had 
delighted  in  her  power  to  intimidate  Pferdminger  and  my- 
self ;  and  this  woman  now  cross-examining  me  was  the  very 
type  of  an  autocrat. 


MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE     151 

"No,"  I  repeated  quickly,  eager  to  hold  the  conversa- 
tion, "I  don't  think  I've  got  it  in  me  even  to  want  to  bully 
a  woman.  I  told  you  that  I  thought  Pferdminger's  voice 
sounded  murderous.  I  was  a  fool,  no  doubt,  but  I  went 
to  Miss  Whiting's  rescue." 

Mrs.  Hargreave  emitted  a  little  hoot  of  impatience,  but 
I  would  not  give  way  to  her.  "It's  the  women  who  bully," 
I  said  in  the  warmth  of  my  new  conviction,  and  I  heard 
Hill  give  a  grunt  of  approval.  "Why,  you've  been  trying 
to  bully  me  ever  since  you  came  into  the  room." 

She  ought  to  have  been  flabbergasted,  but  the  fault  I  had 
accused  in  her  was  one  that  she  could  never  admit. 

"Oh!  that  goes  so  beautifully  with  your  'Oh!  well/  Mr. 
Hornby,"  she  said.  "That's  always  the  ingenuous  mascu- 
line way.  You're  all  so  gentle  and  kind  as  long  as  you 
can  do  just  what  you  like;  but  directly  a  woman  objects 
to  being  treated  like  a  slave  you  open  your  eyes  in  aston- 
ishment and  say  that  she's  bullying  you." 

"What  about  the  case  in  point?"  Hill  began,  but  he  was 
unable  to  stop  the  flood  I  had  released.  Mrs.  Hargreave 
flowed  over  him  with  a  furious  stream  of  words.  She  was 
fluent  with  all  those  earlier  arguments  for  femininism  that 
were  just  becoming  vocal  at  that  time,  all  the  foolish,  clog- 
ging stuff  that  hindered  the  free  expansion  of  the  movement, 
and  remained  in  many  narrow,  bigoted  minds  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  much  that  was  more  rationally  to  follow. 

The  effect  of  that  morning's  lecture  upon  me  was  unfor- 
tunate, inasmuch  as  it  prejudiced  me  for  many  years  against 
the  whole  cause  of  femininism.  I  had  a  little  sealed  com- 
partment in  my  mind,  enclosing  that  first  instinctive  reac- 
tion against  what  was  once  freely  discussed  as  the  "sex- 
war."  And  the  facts  I  learnt  later  about  Mrs.  Hargreave's 
personal  history  only  served  to  confirm  my  unhappy  preju- 
dice against  the  biased  views  she  so  volubly  and  so  un- 
convincingly — as  far  as  I  was  concerned — expressed  on  the 
occasion  of  our  first  meeting. 

But  it  may  be  that  1  am  only  seeking  excuses  for  my- 
self; that  I  am  still  struggling  with  the  impossible  task 


152  HOUSE-MATES 

of  explanation  in  the  hope  of  anticipating  criticism.  For 
what  presently  followed  does,  I  admit,  seem  to  indicate 
that  I  was  still  fast  within  that  old  shell  of  mine. 

Mrs.  Hargreave,  with  a  histrionic  sense  for  effect,  fin- 
ished on  a  high  note,  looked  round  her  audience  with 
slightly  dilated  eyes,  and  vacated  the  platform  before  the 
first  threat  of  anti-climax  was  remotely  possible.  Her 
doctrine  was  too  absolute  to  admit  discussion.  She  could 
affirm  brilliantly,  but  she  could  not  contain  her  impatience 
to  argue  about  this  one,  fixed,  sacred  dogma  of  hers. 

Hill  drew  a  long  breath  of  relief  as  she  went  out,  and 
when  the  door  had  closed  behind  her  he  said:  "She's  a 
clever  woman,  Hornby,  but  she's  got  an  obsession.  I'll  tell 
you  about  it  some  time.  We  try  to  keep  her  off  it,  if  we 
can,  but  there  are  occasions  .  .  .  well,  she  was  just  primed 
for  it  this  morning  by  the  Whiting  episode." 

I  was  glad  that  he  should  bother  to  explain  to  me,  and 
I  should  certainly  have  taken  much  less  notice  of  Mrs. 
Hargreave's  outburst  if  Helen  had  not  found  it  necessary 
to  take  up  the  cudgels  on  her  behalf. 

"Oh !  well,  Mr.  Hill,  I'm  not  sure  .  .  ."  she  began  in  her 
hesitating,  muffled  way;  "I  do  agree  with  her,  really,  you 
know.  It's  so  true  that  women  have  been  kept  down  and — 
and  sat  upon — absolutely  true."  And  then,  feeling  that  her 
own  inarticulate  rendering  of  Mrs.  Hargreave  was  a  very 
inefficient  expression  of  all  that  she  wanted  to  say,  she 
concluded:  "I  agree  with  her — absolutely."  Her  drab  eyes 
were  glowering  a  timid  defiance  at  me. 

I  had  endured  Mrs.  Hargreave,  but  I  was  roused  to  des- 
peration by  the  pin-pricks  of  this  mouse-coloured,  elderly 
young  woman. 

"Well,  I  think  it's  the  most  frightful  rot,"  I  said.  I  knew 
in  some  way  that  these  two  women  were  standing  between 
me  and  that  other  quiet  girl  sitting  on  the  bed. 

"Of  course,"  sneered  Helen,  "naturally  you  would." 

"Why  'naturally'?"  I  said  rudely. 

"Well,  we  know  that  you  don't  like  to  see  women  stand- 


MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE     153 

ing  up  for  themselves,"  she  returned,  still  with  that  same 
air  of  furtive  boldness. 

"I  haven't  the  least  idea  what  you  mean,"  I  said.  I 
was  quite  as  petulant  as  she  was,  and  as  inarticulate. 

Then  she  played  a  card  which  she  must  have  known  in- 
stinctively would  finally  defeat  me.  She  turned  to  Judith 
and  put  her  arms  round  her  shoulders.  "Aren't  you  com- 
ing out  this  morning,  darling?"  she  asked.  "It's  perfectly 
lovely  out,  and  I  don't  think  we  shall  gain  much  by  staying, 
now  Mrs.  Hargreave  has  gone." 

Judith  nodded  affectionately  and  got  up  at  once.  She 
smiled  at  Hill  as  they  went  out,  but  she  did  not  look  at  me. 


IV 

"I'm  interrupting  you,"  I  said  to  Hill. 

My  speech  sounded  polite  and  was  accepted  as  a  con- 
ventional insincerity;  but  I  honestly  wanted  to  get  away. 
I  think  my  intention  was  to  go  downstairs  and  commit 
suicide. 

"You're  not,"  Hill  said.  "I  sha'n't  work  this  morning — 
nor  this  afternoon  either  for  that  matter." 

"Did  you  finish  your  notice  of  the  play  last  night?" 
I  asked.  One  side  of  my  mind  was  attending  automatically 
to  my  companion,  the  remainder  boiled  with  criticism  of 
myself. 

"Yes,  oh!  yes,"  Hill  was  saying;  "and  I  never  told  the 
girls  about  it  after  all.  You  and  Mrs.  H.  were  so  en- 
thralling. We  clean  forgot  it." 

"Do  they  always  come  to  see  you  on  Sunday  morning?" 
I  said.  The  two  sides  of  my  mind  had  come  together  again 
in  response  to  his  last  remark.  I  was  pricked  with  sus- 
picion at  his  casual  mention  of  "the  girls." 

"It's  a  general  reception,"  Hill  said.  "Usually  Lippmann 
and  Herz  come,  too." 

I  hated  the  thought  that  those  two  Germans  had  full 
liberty  to  stare,  and  bow,  and  smirk  there  every  Sunday 


154  HOUSE-MATES 

morning;  and  I  answered  with  a  little  gust  of  impatience. 
"Oh!  well,"  I  said,  "I  think  I'd  better  be  going  now." 

"Just  as  you  like,"  Hill  returned;  and  then  I  wanted 
to  stay.  His  room  seemed  rich  with  possibilities.  "They" 
might  look  in  again  on  their  way  out.  Or  failing  that, 
Hill  might  be  induced  to  talk  about  them.  Downstairs  was 
an  arid  desert.  Nothing  interesting  could  ever  happen  in 
that  confounded  prison  I  had  so  idiotically  fortified  by  my 
little  pretensions  of  dignity. 

I  was  standing  up  in  front  of  the  fireplace,  and  I 
remained  there  by  sheer  inertia. 

"Queer  woman,  that  Mrs.  Hargreave,"  I  said.  I  was 
not  particularly  interested  in  her,  but  I  wanted  to  talk 
about  one  of  the  three  women  who  had  just  gone,  and 
instinctively  I  chose  the  one  who  was  most  remote  from 
my  thoughts. 

"Shove  a  bit  of  coal  on,  there's  a  good  chap,"  Hill  said, 
and  then  began  to  talk  about  Mrs.  Hargreave. 

I  listened  with  the  idea  of  diverting  the  conversation 
to  the  vital  topic  as  soon  as  I  found  an  opportunity. 

"She's  interesting,"  Hill  said,  and  I  mumbled  some  en- 
couragement while  I  dug  into  the  coal-scuttle  with  the  in- 
efficient scoop. 

"You'll  find  your  fingers  quicker,"  Hill  interpolated. 
"She's  been  married  for  twenty  years,  and  now  she  has 
chucked  everything — position,  children,  husband,  everything 
one  usually  postulates  as  making  up  a  woman's  life — in 
order  to  go  on  the  stage." 

"The  stage!"  I  ejaculated  scornfully,  wiping  my  fingers 
on  the  hearth-rug.  "Why,  she  must  be  forty !" 

"Thirty-nine,"  Hill  said,  "and  her  eldest  daughter  is 
eighteen." 

"But  surely  she  has  no  earthly,"  I  remonstrated. 

"Not  much,  I'm  afraid,"  Hill  said.  "But  she's  got  tre- 
mendous perseverance ;  what  the  journalists  call  an  indom- 
itable spirit,  you  know." 

"Has  she  got  any  money  ?"  I  asked. 

"Some  apparently,"  Hill  said.    "A  lump  sum,  I  fancy,  and 


MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE     155 

she's  living  on  the  capital.  I'm  not  sure.  She'll  talk  all 
night  about  her  revolt  from  family  life,  but  she  doesn't 
offer  confidences  about  her  financial  position." 

I  was  interested  now.  "But  I  don't  understand  why  she 
chucked  everything,"  I  said.  "Is  she  stage-struck  or  a  bit 
off  her  head?" 

"She  makes  out  a  fairly  good  case  for  herself,"  Hill 
said.  "Her  point  is  that  she  wants  independence.  Lots 
of  girls  are  saying  the  same  thing  just  now — our  little 
friend,  Judith,  for  instance — but  Mrs.  Hargreave's  case 
is  different,  because  she's  really  sacrificing  something — a 
good  deal,  in  fact,  as  one  generally  counts  things.  There 
isn't  any  adventure,  of  the  usual  kind,  for  her;  it  seems  to 
be  largely  a  matter  of  principle  when  you  hear  her  talk. 
She's  certainly  gone  the  whole  hog.  You  can't  help  admir- 
ing that,  anyway." 

"No!  I  suppose  not,"  I  put  in  mechanically.  I  was  try- 
ing desperately  to  phrase  a  comment  that  would  bring  him 
back  to  that  parenthesis  about  "our  little  friend."  "But 
these  other  girls  you  talk  about  ..."  I  began. 

"That's  so  much  more  comprehensible,"  Hill  said. 
"They're  out  for  all  sorts  of  adventure,  but  the  Hargreave 
revolt  can't  bring  anything  but  a  kind  of  intellectual  sat- 
isfaction, the  way  I  see  it." 

"I  don't  understand,"  I  began  again,  meaning  to  open 
out  another  channel,  but  Hill  did  not  wait  to  hear  what  I 
was  going  to  say. 

"I'll  admit  it's  difficult,"  he  went  on ;  "but  it's  worth  puz- 
zling over.  I  know  another  case  a  little  like  it — a  woman 
over  fifty,  but  she  was  a  widow  which  made  some  differ- 
ence. The  impulse  seems  to  be  the  longing  for  individual 
expression." 

"Couldn't  she  have  found  that  at  home?"  I  suggested. 
"With  children  and  all?" 

"But  she  really  believes  she  can  act,  you  know,"  Hill 
returned. 

"Pretty  piffling  thing  to  do,  anyway,"  I  said.    I  had  very 


156  HOUSE-MATES 

recently  decided  that  the  stage  was  a  rotten  vocation  for 
women. 

"It  is  an  Art,  of  a  kind,  all  the  same,"  Hill  affirmed. 
"There  really  is  a  technique  of  acting."  He  paused  and 
looked  up  at  me — I  was  still  standing  in  front  of  the 
mantelpiece — as  if  he  were  afraid  that  he  might  be  divert- 
ing our  talk  to  a  boring  subject. 

"I  don't  know  much  about  it,"  I  said.  "I'm  only  the 
ordinary  amateur  play-goer;  the  'know-what-I-like'  sort 
of  ass."  I  hesitated  for  a  moment  and  then,  as  Hill  did 
not  reply,  I  went  on:  "But  I've  got  a  sort  of  prejudice 
against  the  stage  as  a  profession  for — for  women.  There's 
a  kind  of  suggestion  in  calling  a  woman  an  actress  that 
somehow  doesn't  fit  with  my  idea  of  ..."  I  found  that 
I  could  not  complete  the  sentence  I  had  intended. 

"Of  Mrs.  Hargreaye?"  Hill  supplied  innocently. 

I  had  been  so  near  my  object  that  this  threat  of  still 
another  digression  irritated  me.  "Oh !  a  woman  who  would 
go  off  and  leave  her  children  like  that  would  do  anything," 
I  said. 

"She  tried  to  take  them  with  her,"  Hill  put  in. 

"And  they  had  the  good  sense  to  refuse?" 

"Well,  the  eldest  girl  seems  to  have  been  bitten  with  her 
mother's  idea.  She  comes  here  sometimes.  She  wants  to 
go  on  the  stage,  too,  I  believe." 

I  sighed  impatiently.    "What's  the  husband  like  ?"  I  asked. 

"Well-meaning  sort  of  chap,  I  imagine,"  Hill  said.  "Bit 
on  the  pious  side,  and  he's  got  on  her  nerves  evidently." 
He  paused  thoughtfully  for  a  few  seconds  before  he  con- 
tinued :  "You  can  say  what  you  like,  Hornby ;  it  is  a  prob- 
lem. A  woman  like  Mrs.  Hargreave  wants  an  outlet,  and 
it's  very  difficult  to  see  how  she  could  have  found  it  at 
home.  This  feminist  movement  isn't  going  to  stop  where 
it  is.  There's  real  force  and  reason  behind  it." 

But  I  could  not  follow  him,  then.  I  had  a  sense  of  some 
stubborn,  tiresome  impediment  that  came  between  me  and 
my  ideal  of  womanhood;  and  while  I  felt  that  the  oppo- 
sition was  foolish  and  untrue,  I  had  not  the  patience  to 


MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE     157 

meet  it  fairly.  It  seemed  to  me  too  silly  to  need  serious 
attention.  I  knew  it  was  wrong  and  I  wanted  to  push  it 
away  with  one  careless  effort.  I  was  like  a  man  trying  to 
think  a  pig  out  of  his  cabbages,  and  when  I  took  up  a  stone 
to  throw,  I  threw  it  passionately  and  altogether  wide  of 
the  mark. 

"Seems  to  me  like  damned  selfishness,"  I  said.  "What 
about  the  unfortunate  husband,  anyway?  Hasn't  he  got 
any  sort  of  claim  to  consideration?" 

"That's  only  a  particular  case,  you  know,"  Hill  said; 
"but  even  so,  there's  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  her.  I 
gather  that  Hargreave  was  a  sensualist.  .  .  ." 

"Do  you  mean  that  he  was  unfaithful  to  her?"  I  in- 
terrupted. 

"No,  I  don't,"  Hill  said.  "I  believe  she'd  have  excused 
that." 

"I  don't  like  her,"  I  said,  with  an  air  of  having  deliv- 
ered an  inalterable  opinion. 

Hill  was  smiling.  "Perhaps  not,"  he  returned,  "but  it's 
no  use  sticking  at  that  like  a  jibbing  mule.  You  won't  stop 
her  by  merely  saying,  'Don't  be  silly.'  She  has  got  an  argu- 
ment. The  movement  has  got  an  argument,  and  if  they 
overstate  it,  it's  only  for  the  sake  of  emphasis." 

I  mentally  consigned  the  movement  and  Mrs.  Hargreave 
to  perdition ;  and  then,  at  last,  dared  what  I  had  been  long- 
ing to  say  for  half  an  hour. 

"But  these  two  girls,"  I  began  resolutely.  "I  don't  know 
their  names  .  .  .  ?" 

"Helen  and  Judith,"  Hill  suggested. 

"Haven't  they  got  surnames?"  I  asked. 

"Oh !  Helen  Binstead  and  Judith  Carrington — at  least, 
'Carrington'  is  her  stage  name.  Her  real  name  is  Lillie, 
but  she  had  to  suppress  that." 

"Why?" 

"Ran  away  from  her  guardian  aunts.  They  still  don't 
know  where  she  is.  You  were  going  to  say?" 

"Oh !  nothing  particular.    Are  they  looking  for  her  ?" 

"The  aunts  ?    Yes,  rather." 


158  HOUSE-MATES 

"But  why  did  she  run  away  ?" 

Hill  was  watching  me  with  that  bantering  smile  of  his. 
"She  had  a  pretty  bad  time  with  them,"  he  said.  'They 
were  early- Victorian  and  pious,  tremendously  didactic,  I 
take  it.  They  were  so  almighty  sure,  you  know,  that  their 
manners  and  methods  were  the  only  possible  ones  for  all 
eternity.  And  Judith  didn't  go  to  them  until  she  was  fif- 
teen, when  her  mother  died;  her  father  had  been  dead  a 
long  time.  So,  all  the  restraints  of  Victorianism  came  a 
bit  hard  on  her.  However,  she  endured  them  for  five 
years." 

"What  made  her  run  away  in  the  end  ?"  I  asked,  and  tried 
to  disguise  as  well  as  I  could  the  craving  of  my  interest. 

"Helen,  chiefly,"  Hill  said.  "Judith  met  her  at  the  sea- 
side, and  they  fell  in  love  with  one  another  in  the  way 
girls  do  sometimes.  They  arranged  the  scheme  between 
them." 

"How  long  ago  was  that?" 

"Only  last  August,"  Hill  replied. 

"Do  you  think  the  aunts  are  likely  to  find  her?"  I  asked 
carelessly. 

"Doesn't  really  make  much  difference  if  they  do,"  Hill 
said.  "They  can't  compel  her  to  go  back.  It's  very  hard 
on  them,  of  course." 

"Hard  on  them?"  I  ejaculated.  "You  surely  don't  think 
a  girl  like — like  Miss  Carrington — ought  to  be  shut  up 
in  that  awful  old-maidish  atmosphere.  You  don't  know 
what  it's  like,  my  dear  chap.  I've  suffered  from  it  all  my 
life,  and  I've  only  just  begun  to  realise  it." 

"Then  you  don't  think  it  merely  looks  like  'damned  self- 
ishness' in  Judith's  case?"  Hill  put  in  slyly. 

"Oh!  surely,  this  is  absolutely  different  from  the  Har- 
greave  case,"  I  expostulated. 

"Possibly.  In  some  ways,"  Hill  said.  "But  if  there's 
something  to  be  said  for  Hargreave,  there  are  points  for 
the  aunts,  too." 

I  was  sure  he  was  wrong,  but  my  argument  was  not  a 


MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE     159 

very  sound  one.  "You're  too  good  for  me  at  dialectic," 
I  said  at  last. 

"You've  got  no  case,"  Hill  replied.  "I  don't  want  to  con- 
found you,  you  know.  I  want  to  convince  you." 

I  frowned  over  that  for  a  few  seconds  before  I  said: 
"That  woman  annoys  me.  She  seems  to  have  been  so 
unforgiveably  selfish." 

"But  the  same  thing  applies  to  Judith,"  Hill  submitted. 

"I  haven't  heard  her  case,  yet — not  properly,"  I  said. 
"She  may  have  had  all  sorts  of  reasons.  .  .  ." 

"So  may  Mrs.  Hargreave.  .  .  ." 

"She  looks  an  egotist,"  I  retorted  crossly.  "And  a 
fanatic." 

"Sheer  prejudice,"  Hill  returned.  "Also,  I  find  virtues 
in  her  fanaticism." 


I  was  annoyed,  but  not  with  Hill.  There  was  a  sin- 
cerity about  him  that  appealed  to  me.  Moreover,  I  admired 
him  aesthetically.  His  poise  was  right,  in  some  natural, 
graceful  way — even  the  slight  stoop  of  his  head  fell  into 
the  composition  and  gratified  my  sense  of  appropriateness. 
And  yet  the  composure  of  his  attitude  expressed  potential- 
ity rather  than  inertia.  He  was  alive.  I  could  picture  him 
moved  by  a  tremendous  enthusiasm.  His  dark  eyes  glowed 
with  an  earnestness  very  different  from  the  thin,  cool  flame 
of  Mrs.  Hargreave's  fanaticism. 

I  drew  him  when  I  went  back  to  my  own  room.  I  am  better 
at  caricature  than  portraits,  but  that  effort  was  a  success. 
I  did  it  in  soft  pencil  on  "hot-pressed"  paper,  and,  as  hap- 
pens sometimes,  the  thing  just  came  of  itself.  I  could  see 
every  pencil  mark  on  the  paper  before  I  put  it  in. 

Afterwards  I  tried  another  portrait,  a  lamentable  fail- 
ure that  made  me  furious  with  myself  for  the  criminality 
of  the  libel.  Nothing  was  right  except  the  delicious  curve 
of  the  hair  over  the  left  ear.  And  when  I  had  burnt  the 
abomination  with  a  sort  of  desperate  spite,  as  if  I  were 


160  HOUSE-MATES 

trying  to  inflict  a  really  effective  punishment  on  myself,  I 
found  that  my  memory  was  as  faulty  as  my  draughtsman- 
ship. The  beautiful  line  of  that  one  ripple  of  hair  was 
all  that  I  could  visualise.  I  could  remember  a  host  of  indi- 
vidual details — and  particularly  a  look  of  half-timid  eager- 
ness as  if  she  shrank  a  little  from  pushing  her  enquiry  too 
far — but  the  details  would  not  blend  into  a  single  picture. 

I  tried  again  after  lunch  and  then  went  out  for  a  walk 
down  Oxford  Street  and  across  the  Park  into  Kensington 
Gardens.  The  afternoon  was  as  clear  and  crisp  as  the 
morning  had  been — my  father  used  to  call  that  spell  of  fine 
weather  we  so  often  get  in  October,  "St.  Luke's  summer" — 
but  the  gardens  did  not  fulfil  my  morning's  anticipations 
of  the  country.  There  was  a  worn  and  jaded  air  even 
in  the  less  frequented  depths  between  the  Round  Pond 
and  the  Serpentine  (near  the  place  where  Watts's  "Physical 
Energy"  now  makes  one  quite  sure  that  Art  should  never 
be  didactic)  ;  a  feeling  of  dust  and  smoke  and  tired  human- 
ity. Indeed,  the  last  was  very  much  in  evidence;  and  the 
women  especially  seemed  to  me  clumsy  and  tawdry;  they 
were  none  of  them  right,  and  I  had  a  personal  grudge 
against  them  all  for  their  lamentable  failure  to  conform 
to  my  ideal  of  what  they  ought  to  have  been — an  ideal 
that  I  could  not  formulate  in  words  any  better  than  I  could 
draw  it  on  paper. 

I  was  restless  and  unsatisfied;  and  quite  unable,  still,  to 
picture  any  single  thing  that  would  satisfy  me.  I  went 
back  to  my  lodging  after  tea.  I  hated  the  thought  of  sit- 
ting alone  there,  with  nothing  to  do,  but  I  could  not  stay 
away.  Keppel  Street  had  an  irresistible  attraction  for  me. 
I  felt  that  every  minute  I  stayed  away  from  it  I  might  be 
losing  some  opportunity — for  what  I  had  no  idea. 

I  had  not  been  in  more  than  ten  minutes  when  I  heard 
two  people  coming  downstairs.  I  knew  instantly  that  they 
were  Miss  Binstead  and  the  girl  she  had  persuaded  to 
join  her  in  that  doubtful  place.  And  when  they  paused 
at  the  foot  of  the  stairs  I  suffered  an  agony  of  nervousness, 
fearing  that  they  might  knock  at  my  door.  My  revulsion  of 


MY  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  HOUSE     161 

feeling  when  I  heard  them  go  out  gave  me  courage  to  go 
over  to  the  window,  and  I  saw  them  go  by  in  the  dusk;  a 
little  hurriedly,  I  thought,  as  if  they  were  conscious  that 
they  might  be  watched. 

I  was  very  sure  of  one  thing  that  evening,  namely,  that 
I  hated  Miss  Helen  Binstead.  I  knew  that  she  was  my 
enemy,  and  I  loathed  the  thought  that  she  would  be  continu- 
ally construing  every  action  and  word  of  mine  to  my  dis- 
advantage. If  I  showed  my  face  at  the  window,  she  would 
report  that  I  leered. 


VIII 
PROGRESS 


A  BSORPTION  by  a  single  subject  is  bad  for  the  mind. 
<£*•  I  do  not  know  if  other  people's  experience  is  the  same 
as  mine  in  this  particular,  but  I  have  found  that,  if  I  study 
a  problem  too  earnestly,  the  problem  presently  takes  the 
upper  hand.  It  begins  as  a  detached  thing  that  I  can 
regard  from  the  outside,  and  ends  by  enveloping  me.  For- 
tunately I  always  retain  the  ability  to  escape;  the  small 
unanalysable  capacity  that  separates  the  sane  from  the 
obsessed. 

The  trouble  that  began  to  dominate  me  during  the  fort- 
night that  followed  my  Sunday  morning  in  Hill's  room 
was  my  suspicion  of  Miss  Binstead.  I  was  right  about 
her  up  to  a  point,  but  I  allowed  my  suspicion  to  grow  be- 
yond all  reasonable  bounds.  I  started,  sanely  enough, 
by  believing  that  she  disliked  me  and  that  she  meant,  if  pos- 
sible, to  prevent  any  intimacy  between  me  and  the  girl  whom 
she  had,  in  a  sense,  adopted.  But  I  soon  reached  the  absurd 
position  of  regarding  her  as  a  kind  of  female  devil,  the 
incarnation  of  malignancy. 

I  admit  that  my  mental  processes  were  all  a  trifle  ab- 
normal about  that  time.  For  one  thing,  I  could  not  work, 
and  that  irritated  me.  Until  then  I  had  always  been  able 
to  find  relief  in  occupation.  When  I  was  most  depressed 
at  the  prospect  of  married  life  with  my  cousin,  my  work 
had  afforded  me  an  outlet  at  the  moment,  and  in  my 
thoughts>it  had  seemed  to  be  the  one  thing  to  which  I  could 
still  look  forward  in  the  future  I  so  gloomily  pictured. 

162 


PROGRESS  163 

Now,  my  capacity  for  concentration  had  apparently  de- 
serted me.  The  task  of  finishing  the  drawings  I  was  mak- 
ing to  illustrate  the  article  on  "The  £1,000  House"  I  was 
submitting  to  The  Studio  had  lost  all  interest  for  me.  I 
could  not  lose  myself  in  the  detail  of  design.  It  was  as 
if  some  other  thought  continually  besieged  me,  seeking  an 
entrance  into  my  consciousness ;  some  thought  that  I  could 
not  define. 

For  while  I  knew,  and  admitted  to  myself,  that  the  per- 
sonality of  Judith  Carrington  had  some  peculiar  and  un- 
precedented attraction  for  me,  I  had  not  reached  the  stage 
of  understanding  that  I  was  finally  and  irretrievably  in  love 
with  her.  That  supposition  had  an  air  of  being  somewhat 
ridiculous  in  the  circumstances.  If  I  had  been  consciously 
prepared  to  worship  some  woman,  had  deliberately  sought 
to  involve  myself  in  some  romantic  entanglement,  I  should 
have  nursed  those  first  symptoms  of  mine,  and  should  soon 
have  persuaded  myself  that  I  was  the  victim  of  a  grand, 
and  probably  hopeless,  passion. 

But,  so  far  from  having  sought  love,  I  had  first  seen 
Judith  when  I  was  chafing  at  the  bonds  of  my  engagement 
to  Gladys,  when  the  thought  uppermost  in  my  mind  had 
been  the  thought  of  cutting  myself  free  from  feminine  con- 
trol. During  all  that  time  the  word  "release"  had  seemed 
the  most  blessed  ^n  the  English  language.  And,  no  doubt, 
something  of  that  attitude  still  persisted.  I  should  cer- 
tainly have  been  alarmed  at  the  thought  of  pledging  my 
freedom  to  any  woman  just  then. 

The  explanation  of  my  uneasiness  that  I  took  out  and 
exhibited  to  myself  with  a  certain  plausibility  was  the  neces- 
sity for  vindicating  my  character.  I  had  been  accused  by 
Miss  Binstead  of  being  a  woman-hunter.  Neither  Mrs. 
Hargreave — who  had  called  me  an  old  maid — nor  Hill  was 
the  least  influenced  by  that  story  of  my  attempt  to  accost 
the  two  women  on  the  doorstep.  I  was  fairly  sure  that 
Miss  Binstead,  herself,  attached  little  importance  to  it.  But 
I  believed  that  she  was  maintaining  the  fiction  of  my  loose 
life  for  her  own  purposes,  and  although  only  one  person 


164  HOUSE-MATES 

was  likely  to  remain  under  any  misconception  by  reason 
of  that  slander,  I  told  myself  that  I  detested  the  thought 
that  any  woman  should  have  such  a  false  opinion  of  me. 
If  the  thing  had  stopped  at  the  initial  charge,  I  argued, 
there  would  have  been  no  reason  for  my  disturbance  of 
mind — I  could  have  lived  it  down.  But — and  it  was  here 
that  I  was  most  convincing — the  horrid  suspicion  of  me 
was  being  added  to,  day  by  day.  Whatever  I  did,  could  be 
used  as  evidence  against  me.  If  I  took  no  more  notice 
of  Miss  Binstead  and  her  friend,  it  was  proof  that  I  was 
ashamed  of  myself;  if  I  attempted  to  explain  myself,  I 
should  be  persisting — according  to  that  confounded  woman 
— in  my  original  beastliness. 

All  this  may  sound  very  foolish,  but  it  was  uncommonly 
real  to  me  at  the  time.  The  problem  of  outwitting  Miss 
Binstead  began  to  envelope  me.  And,  as  I  have  said,  it 
interfered  with  my  work. 

II 

During  the  first  week  of  this  growing  obsession  I  looked 
forward  to  the  next  Sunday  morning  and  the  rendezvous 
in  Hill's  room.  I  hoped  that  I  might  at  least  have  an 
opportunity,  then,  to  exhibit  myself  in  my  natural  char- 
acter. I  pictured  myself  as  being  very  earnest  about  my 
profession;  making  a  little  dissertation  on  the  future  of 
town-architecture,  perhaps;  and  particularly  as  being  ex- 
tremely interesting  and  at  the  same  time  almost  ostenta- 
tiously free  from  any  desire  that  did  not  tend  towards 
the  benefit  of  humanity.  I  worked  up  a  few  figures  about 
slum  property  that  had  recently  attracted  my  attention. 

But  Miss  Binstead  and  her  friend  did  not  attend  the 
meeting  of  the  "Sunday  morning  club"  that  day.  They  had 
not  gone  out.  Mrs.  Hargreave  came  down  with  a  mes- 
sage to  say  that  Helen  had  a  headache  and  was  not  com- 
ing; and  Judith  was  presumably  helping  her  friend  to 
nurse  this  chimerical  ailment.  Personally,  I  had  no  doubt 
whatever  that  Miss  Binstead  was  deliberately  avoiding  the' 


PROGRESS  165 

possibility  of  meeting  me ;  and  Hill  was,  I  think,  also  of  my 
opinion.  He  looked  up  at  me  when  Mrs.  Hargreave  deliv- 
ered the  message,  as  if  he  were  about  to  make  some  com- 
ment, and  then  one  of  the  two  Germans — both  Lippmann 
and  Herz  were  there — interposed  a  remark  and  diverted 
the  conversation. 

The  talk  that  morning  was  all  on  the  subject  of  music, 
even  Mrs.  Hargreave  found  no  opening  and  left  after  she 
had  been  there  twenty  minutes  or  so.  The  stout  Lippmann 
was,  it  appeared,  a  very  creditable  performer  on  the  'cello, 
and  Herz  (I  found  that  he  was  the  stumpy  grey-haired 
young  man  who  wore  a  bowler  with  his  frock-coat),  al- 
though he  did  not  play  any  instrument,  was  evidently  a 
keen  musician. 

I  was  interested  for  a  time,  despite  the  acute  disappoint- 
ment and  annoyance  I  was  suffering.  They  were  talking 
of  Wagner  and  of  the  gradual  supersession  of  the  impor- 
tance of  Bayreuth  by  the  Munich  performances.  But  soon 
they  began  to  discuss  technicalities  that  I  could  not  follow, 
and  when  Lippmann  went  to  fetch  his  'cello  in  order 
to  illustrate  an  argument  about  some  particular  passage, 
I  made  an  excuse  of  work  and  went  downstairs. 

Little  Herz  made  an  apology  to  me.  "You  are,  perhaps, 
not  interested  in  music,"  he  said. 

I  assured  him  that  I  was,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I 
should  certainly  have  stayed  on  if  I  had:  not  wanted  to  be 
alone  so  that  I  might  consider  Miss  Binstead's  new  rebuff 
and  a  possible  reply  to  it. 

Herz  was  not  a  bad  little  chap,  and  I  admired  him  and 
Lippmann  for  their  knowledge  of  and  interest  in  music; 
but  directly  the  keenness  of  my  attention  was  diverted  from 
their  talk,  I  became  restless  and  depressed;  and  the  loud- 
ness  of  their  voices — they  argued  the  simplest  point  with 
tremendous  heat — distracted  and  hurt  me. 

Nevertheless,  when  I  was  alone  in  my  sitting-room,  I 
could  almost  have  welcomed  the  diversion  of  their  eager 
argument.  I  felt  so  powerless.  What  could  I  do  to  break 
down  the  influence  of  that  mouse-coloured  Helen?  I  de- 


166  HOUSE-MATES 

vised  wild  plans  to  enlist  Hill's  assistance,  and  then  shrank 
from  the  idea  of  showing  him  that  I  cared. 

I  think  that  I  came  for  the  first  time  that  morning  to 
the  very  verge  of  asking  myself  why  I  cared  so  much. 
The  apparent  emptiness  of  Hill's  crowded  room  was  hardly 
to  be  accounted  for  by  a  mere  impatience  to  justify  myself 
to  the  absent  Helen  Binstead.  I  still  tried  diligently  to 
lay  all  accounts  to  that  score,  but  I  found  the  system  in- 
creasingly difficult.  It  would  not  convincingly  explain  the 
sudden  blankness  which  had  come  to  me  when  Mrs.  Har- 
greave  brought  her  message;  nor  the  horrible  restlessness 
that  possessed  me.  I  could  not  think  of  my  work,  I  could 
not  contemplate  any  possible  or  impossible  occupation  that 
would  afford  me  the  least  relief  or  satisfaction. 

Just  for  one  moment,  however,  I  had  a  glimpse  of  some 
surcease  from  this  torment  of  unquiet  in  the  thought  of 
paying  a  surprise  visit  to  Rose  Whiting.  I  pictured  her 
as  protesting,  antagonistic,  even  violent,  and  as  setting  my- 
self the  task  of  overcoming  her  resistance  by  appealing 
to  her  sympathy.  The  picture  had  some  dream  quality, 
inasmuch  as  I  saw  myself  immune  from  ultimate  reproach. 
She  was  what  she  was,  and,  however  unwilling  to  entertain 
me,  she  had  no  drastic  resort  that  could  bring  me  to  shame. 
I  should  have,  as  it  were,  the  escape  of  being  able  to 
wake  myself  at  any  minute.  It  was  not  the  contemplation 
of  any  sensual  satisfaction  that  drew  me,  but  the  longing 
for  some  intense  struggle  of  the  spirit  with  a  woman.  I 
craved  for  the  expression  of  brutality.  I  wanted  to  hurt 
Rose  Whiting;  and  it  was  my  understanding  of  that  desire, 
no  less  than  the  fear  of  my  visit  being  reported  on  the 
third  floor,  that  really  saved  me  from  putting  my  mad 
scheme  into  practice.  A  dreadful  image  of  Rose  Whiting, 
smiling,  avariciously  complacent,  set  me  wondering  what 
awful  outlet  I  might  seek  for  the  satisfaction  of  my  brute 
lust.  If  her  body  were  nothing  to  her,  she  would,  at  least, 
defend  her  life. 

I  jammed  on  my  hat  and  was  half-way  down  the  street 
before  I  realised  that  it  was  raining  heavily.  I  hesitated 


PROGRESS  167 

and  decided  to  go  back  for  my  umbrella.  I  could  find  pleas- 
ure in  the  thought  of  outrage,  but  I  could  not  face  the  sus- 
picion of  being  eccentric,  nor  the  small  inconvenience  of  a 
wetting.  Civilisation  lays  such  odd  little  snares  for  us. 

I  returned  to  the  house  for  my  overcoat  and  umbrella. 
But  when  I  had  them  and  could  face  the  criticism  of 
returning  church-goers  without  a  qualm,  I  could  think  of 
nowhere  to  go.  London  on  a  Sunday — and  a  wet  Sunday 
at  that ! — offers  no  temptations  to  the  adventurous. 

The  memory  of  the  Germans  and  their  talk  of  music 
brought  me  my  first  real  relief.  I  had  some  lunch  at  Soho, 
and  walked  all  the  way  to  the  Carmelite  Church  at  Kensing- 
ton. In  the  evening  I  went  to  Farm  Street. 


in 

I  had  succeeded  in  finding  distraction  for  one  day,  but 
the  sense  of  being  thwarted  returned  on  Monday  morning 
and  grew  steadily  worse  during  the  week.  All  my  resent- 
ment focussed  on  Helen  Binstead.  She  figured  in  my 
thoughts  as  a  subtly  powerful  and  malignant  enemy,  but 
I  must  insist  that  I  was  not  a  normal  human  being  for 
those  few  days.  In  my  relations  with  the  people  I  met  and 
spoke  to,  I  was  sane  and  ordinary  enough.  f  I  do  not  sup- 
pose that  any  one  I  saw  at  that  time  noticed  the  least  dif- 
ference in  me.  I  went  down  to  Copsfield,  for  example,  on 
the  Wednesday  to  measure  up  some  of  the  work  on  Parkin- 
son's house  and  give  the  builder  his  certificate;  and  while 
I  was  occupied  on  that  job,  I  could  attend  to  it  with  my 
usual  capacity.  But  as  soon  as  I  was  alone,  in  my  rooms, 
I  returned  to  the  contemplation  of  my  grievance  which 
was  coming  to  be  the  chief  essential  of  the  associations  that 
surrounded  me  in  Keppel  Street. 

I  had  a  weak,  forlorn  hope  that  I  might  see  Helen  Bin- 
stead  and  her  friend  on  the  following  Sunday — they  never 
went  past  my  window,  now,  always  turning  east  when  they 
came  out — and  I  went  up  to  Hill's  room  about  twelve 


168  HOUSE-MATES 

o'clock.  I  tried  to  postpone  my  visit  to  an  even  later  hour. 
I  had  some  foolish  idea  that  if  by  any  chance  "they"  did  go, 
it  would  be  a  point  in  my  favour  that  I  should  be  very 
late  in  putting  in  an  appearance.  My  one  idea  of  diplomacy, 
now,  was  to  pretend  to  be  oblivious  of  their  existence.  And 
then,  after  a  cold,  nervous  morning  spent  in  trying  to  fritter 
away  the  time,  I  was  suddenly  panic-stricken  by  the  thought 
that  "they"  might  leave  before  I  arrived. 

I  found  Hill  alone. 

"No  meeting  this  morning?"  I  asked. 

"Herz  came  in  for  half  an  hour,"  Hill  said.  "No  one 
else."  He  had  been  reading  when  I  came  in,  but  he  shut 
up  his  book  and  threw  it  on  to  the  table,  and  I  knew  by 
the  serious,  questioning  look  he  turned  upon  me  that  he 
was  ready  to  talk  to  me  about  the  one  subject  I  wished  most 
to  discuss. 

"I'm  afraid  I'm  the  Jonah,"  I  said,  as  carelessly  as  I 
could.  "You'd  better  send  a  notice  round  to  say  that  I've 
been  black-balled  by  the  president." 

Hill  looked,  I  thought,  a  little  uneasy.  "It's  only  Helen, 
you  know,"  he  said.  "Just  a  chance  the  others  didn't  come 
in  this  morning.  Mrs.  Hargreave  is  away,  and  Lippmann 
has  gone  to  see  some  musical  friends  at  Sydenham.  .  .  ." 
His  inflexion  left  the  sentence  open  for  my  return  to  his 
first  statement. 

"Yes,  she's  taken  a  fierce  dislike  to  me  for  some  reason," 
I  said,  and  made  a  foolish,  neighing  sort  of  sound  that 
was  meant  for  a  laugh. 

Hill  frowned.  "It's  quite  natural  that  you  .  .  ."  he  be- 
gan, but  I  interrupted  him  with  a  wilful  misunderstanding. 

"Perfectly  natural  that  she  should  loathe  the  sight  of 
me,"  I  said,  and  only  just  succeeded  in  cutting  off  a  repe- 
tition of  that  tittering  laugh.  "I'm  quite  ready  to  admit  it. 
I  only  came  up  to  tender  my  resignation.  I  waited  until 
I  thought  they'd  be  all  gone." 

Hill  knew  that  that  was  a  lie,  but  he  evidently  found 
an  excuse  for  me. 

"You  seem  to  have  been  rather  badly  hit,"  he  said. 


PROGRESS  169 

I  really  misunderstood  him  that  time.  "Oh !  no !"  I  said, 
trying  to  get  an  effect  of  contempt  into  my  voice.  "It's — 
it's  rather  riling,  that's  all.  All  this  fuss,  I  mean,  about 
nothing.  I  don't  care  a  curse  what  Miss  Binstead  thinks 
of  me — I  wish  you  would  tell  her  so — but  I  can't  help  feel- 
ing that  she's  making  a  ridiculous  ..."  I  could  find  noth- 
ing better  than  my  original  "fuss  about  nothing." 

Hill  shook  his  head. ,  "Don't  be  an  ass,  Hornby,"  he  said. 
"You  must  surely  know  that  that  isn't  the  point  at  all." 

"I  don't,"  was  all  the  answer  I  found.  "Really,  I  don't," 
I  repeated  in  a  cooler  tone.  Something  in  his  voice  had 
stimulated  my  curiosity. 

"You  must  have  known  that  Helen  is  not  that  kind  of 
woman,"  he  said,  and  then  added,  as  it  seemed  quite  a  long 
time  afterwards,  "normally." 

"Is  she  ever  normal?"  I  asked. 

"It  is  this  amazing  friendship — passion — that  has  made 
such  a  difference  to  her,"  Hill  explained. 

"What  passion?"  I  put  in. 

"For  Judith,"  he  said. 

"I  didn't  know,"  I  remarked  lamely.  I  had  no  idea 
what  he  meant. 

"It  happens  fairly  often,"  Hill  went  on.  "At  girls' 
schools  it's  common  enough  to  be  used  by  novelists  as  a 
certain  hit;  but  they're  a  bit  shy  of  things  like  this  Helen- 
Judith  affair.  I  don't  know  why  they  should  be." 

I  was  still  at  sea  and  must  have  showed  it  in  my  face, 
for  Hill  laughed  and  said :  "Perhaps  your  evident  failure 
to  grasp  the  idea  is  sufficient  explanation  of  the  novelists' 
omission.  You're  typical,  perhaps,  of  the  ordinary  reader — 
the  reader  who  pays.  It  never  does  to  puzzle  him.  The 
thing  he — no,  she,  I  fancy — can't  recognise  at  sight  isn't 
true  for  the  purposes  of  fiction." 

"But — but  what  is  it?"  I  asked,  in  the  tone  of  one  cau- 
tiously and  distantly  observing  some  unpleasant  insect.  I 
had  an  idea  that  there  was  a  mystery  behind  all  this  sug- 
gestion of  Hill's.  He  had  used  the  word  "passion,"  and  I 
found  it  horribly  repulsive  in  this  connection. 


170  HOUSE-MATES 

Hill  smiled.  "You  needn't  be  upset  about  it,"  he  said. 
"It's  quite  clean;  respectable  even.  You  see,  Helen  is  not 
the  type  of  woman  who  attracts  a  man.  She's  very  clever ; 
if  she'd  been  better  looking  or  a  great  deal  uglier,  she'd 
have  made  a  success  as  an  actress.  In  fact,  she  did  make 
some  kind  of  a  hit,  three  years  ago,  in  that  thing  of  Mark- 
ley's — 'The  Further  Side.'  I  don't  know  if  you  saw  it. 
Well,  anyway,  she  isn't  the  sort  of  girl  a  man  falls  in 
love  with,  and  she  has  been  starved,  if  you  know  what  I 
mean,  on  that  side.  And  she  appealed  to  Judith.  Judith 
did  fall  in  love  with  her  in  one  sense.  Helen  was  new  to 
her  in  every  way;  new  ideas  and  so  on.  And  then  there 
was  the  inevitable  glamour  of  the  stage.  Judith  might 
have  taken  to  Mrs.  Hargreave  in  much  the  same  way  if 
she'd  happened  to  turn  up  just  then  instead  of  Helen.  And, 
of  course,  all  this  devotion  and  admiration  was  the  purest 
balm  to  Helen — you  can  understand  that.  .  .  ." 

I  was  beginning  to  understand  well  enough  to  ask  a 
further  question. 

"Yes.  That's  all  right,"  I  said.  "But,  for  the  life  of  me, 
I  can't  see  how  it  explains  Miss  Binstead's  loathing  for 
myself." 

"Jealous,  my  dear  chap,"  Hill  said. 

"What?"  I  gasped.  "Jealous?  Of  me?"  Surely,  the 
devotion  she  had  inspired  had  brought  Helen  Binstead  no 
such  balm  as  that  suggestion  brought  to  me  just  then.  I 
realised  the  absurdity  of  Hill's  statement,  but  it  was  enough 
for  the  moment  that  he  should  have  made  it. 

"Of  you  or  any  man,"  he  hedged. 

"Does  she  loathe  you  too,  then?"  I  asked,  finding  new 
inspiration  in  his  amendment. 

"No,  no.  She's  clever  enough  to — to  make  distinctions," 
he  said. 

"On  what  grounds?"  I  pressed  him. 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "Of  course  she  saw  from 
the  beginning  that  you  were  going  to  fall  in  love  with 
Judith,"  he  said. 


PROGRESS  171 

"Oh !  bosh !"  I  ejaculated.  "I  mean  I  didn't.  I  haven't. 
I — I'm  not  likely  to." 

"Well,  she  thought  you  were,"  Hill  returned.  "And 
that's  the  important  point." 

I  wavered  between  a  desire  to  repeat  my  disavowal  and 
an  inclination  to  attack  Miss  Binstead's  premature  conclu- 
sions, before  I  gave  expression  almost  instinctively  to  the 
thought  that  was  now  pressing  into  the  foreground  of  my 
consciousness. 

"But  it's  so  absurd,"  I  said.  "I  mean  that  she — Miss 
Carrington — has  never  given  her  any  grounds  for  .  .  .  sup- 
posing that  .  .  ." 

Hill  waited  for  me  to  finish,  and  when  I  resolutely  shut 
my  mouth  and  refused  to  commit  myself  any  further,  he 
looked  at  me  with  that  hint  of  banter  in  his  face  he  had 
shown  once  or  twice  previously. 

"How  do  you  know  ?"  he  asked. 

I  sniffed  my  claims  to  recognition  out  of  existence. 

"Why  should  she  ?"  I  returned. 

"Tall,  well-set-up  young  man,  with  a  touch  of  the  aristo- 
cratic manner  .  .  .  rather  appealing  blue  eyes  .  .  ."  Hill 
was  continuing  his  inventory  when  I  cut  him  short  by  ask- 
ing him  not  to  be  an  infernal  ass. 

"We  rather  liked  the  look  of  you,  at  first,"  he  went 
on,  "in  spite  of  your  brass  plate  and  your  haughty  air 
of  aloofness." 

"Rot!"  I  said.    "I  was  confoundedly  shy." 

"We  hoped  it  might  be  that,  until  the  incident  on  the 
front  steps,"  Hill  replied. 

I  was  getting  a  very  unexpected  picture  of  Wilfred 
Hornby.  I  had  never  attempted  to  see  myself  on  broad 
lines  in  relation  to  the  other  occupants  of  the  house.  I  had 
been  interested  in  watching  them  through  my  window ;  but 
it  had  never  occurred  to  me  that  they  were  not  only  watch- 
ing but  also  discussing  me.  And  I  could  not  avoid  the 
feeling  that  what  Hill  had  said  had  been  in  some  way  flat- 
tering. I  took  up  that  rather  than  his  reference  to  my  dis- 
astrous mistake  when  I  replied : 


HOUSE-MATES 

"It  really  was  nervousness.  I  wanted  tremendously  to 
know  you.  I  used  to  watch  you  going  by.  I  thought  you 
were  an  artist."  That  was  not  quite  a  true  statement,  but 
I  made  it  in  all  sincerity.  I  had  temporarily  forgotten  my 
first  resolution  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  my  fellow  lodg- 
ers. I  did  not  realise  how  amazingly  I  had  already  entered 
into  the  life  of  the  house. 

Hill's  smile  was  delightfully  frank.  "I  boasted  that  I 
should  have  you  up  here  before  long,"  he  said. 

"And  now  you're  sorry,"  I  put  in. 

"Oh !  we  must  get  over  this  misunderstanding,"  he  said. 

"Pretty  difficult,"  I  remarked  thoughtfully.  "The  way 
you  see  the  thing,  it  isn't  a  question  of  getting  over  an  initial 
prejudice,  so  far  as  Miss  Binstead  is  concerned,  so  much 
as  ...  as  ..." 

"Challenging  her  right  to  the  supreme  possession  of  Ju- 
dith," Hill  suggested. 

"But  I  don't  want  ..."  I  began. 

"No,  so  you  said,"  he  returned.  "We'll  take  that  for 
granted.  But  there  is  a  way.  .  .  ." 

"Which  is  ...   ?"  I  prompted  him. 

"Get  hold  of  Judith." 

I  knew  a  dozen  reasons  why  that  was  impossible;  but 
Hill  would  not  listen  to  them. 

"She's  quite  an  independent  minded  young  woman,"  he 
interrupted.  "She's  quiet,  but  you  needn't  imagine  that  she 
just  sits  still  and  lets  Helen  order  her  about." 

"She  probably  hates  me,  though,"  I  insisted. 

"She  doesn't,"  Hill  said. 

"How  do  you  know?"  I  begged  him. 

"She  and  I  were  talking  about  you  at  the  theatre,  last 
night; — Helen  wasn't  there." 

"And  what  did  she  say?" 

"Only  that  it  was  a  pity  Helen  had  taken  such  a  dis- 
like to  you.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  believe  Helen  has 
made  the  mistake  of  overdoing  it  rather,  and  put  Judith's 
back  up." 

Everything  was  taking  a  new  shape  for  me,  the  house 


PROGRESS  173 

and  its  inhabitants;  and  more  particularly  the  personality 
of  Helen  Binstead.  I  saw  her  no  longer  as  an  all-powerful, 
malignant  spirit,  but — with  a  faint  twinge  of  pity — as  a 
rather  desolate,  desperate  woman. 


IV 

Hill  did  not  suggest  any  method  for  putting  his  advice 
into  practice,  and  I  shrank  from  framing  a  direct  question. 
I  felt  that  I  could  not  ask  him  how  it  would  be  pos- 
sible for  me  to  meet  Judith  without  Helen.  But  when  I 
went  downstairs,  I  went  with  a  light  heart.  The  prospect 
had  been  opened  for  me;  it  was  no  longer  hidden  by  the 
enormous  obstacle  of  my  obsession.  The  figure  of  Helen 
Binstead  had  shrunk  to  life  size.  Moreover,  she  no  longer 
confronted  me,  as  I  had  fearfully  imagined,  with  all  the 
forces  arrayed  on  her  side.  Hill  was  certainly  with  me; 
and  he  had  given  me  a  delicious  hope  that  Judith  was,  at 
least,  not  fighting  against  me. 

I  was  more  or  less  content  to  leave  my  analysis  at  that 
point.  I  would  not  frankly  admit,  as  yet,  that  I  had  any 
motive  beyond  the  clearing  of  my  character.  That  mo- 
tive was  quite  insufficient  to  explain  my  recent  emotions 
or  my  resolutions  for  the  future,  but  for  a  little  while 
longer  I  persuaded  myself  that  I  was  a  free  man. 

As  to  resolutions,  however,  I  had  nothing  that  could  be 
called  a  plan.  I  left  the  future  to  Fate ;  and  Fate  rewarded 
my  confidence  in  her  roundabout,  unexpected  way,  by  send- 
ing me  a  mysterious  visitor  who  seemed  to  have  no  sort 
of  connection  with  my  affairs. 

He  came  about  four  o'clock  that  same  afternoon.  Mr. 
Pferdminger  opened  the  door  and  showed  him  straight  into 
my  room  with  the  announcement,  "A  gentleman  to  see  you, 
Mr.  Hornby." 

He  was  a  well-dressed,  professional  looking  man;  and 
even  as  I  stood  up,  I  tried  to  soften  that  "what-the-devil" 
air  which  I  was  so  apt  to  put  on  with  strangers.  I  had  a 
wild,  impulsive  hope  that  this  might  be  an  unexpected  client. 


174  HOUSE-MATES 

"Mr.  Hornby?"  the  stranger  asked.  He  was  obviously 
nervous.  I  recognised  his  type  at  once;  I  had  seen  his 
likeness  in  one  of  our  church-wardens  at  Hampstead. 

"Yes,  my  name  is  Hornby,"  I  said,  trying  not  to  be  too 
stiff.  "Won't  you  sit  down?" 

He  thanked  me,  fumbled  for  a  moment  with  his  top 
hat  and  gloves,  and  then  took  a  chair  by  the  table. 

I  think  I  had  begun  to  have  my  suspicions  of  him  even 
then.  His  manner  was  not  that  of  a  man  who  had  come 
to  offer  his  patronage.  And  I  had  a  queer  prejudice  against 
some  effect  of  his  clothes.  I  cannot  say  quite  what  it  was ; 
perhaps  the  stiff  straightness  of  his  striped  trousers,  or 
the  pearl  buttons  on  the  cloth  uppers  of  his  patent  leather 
boots. 

"You  want  to  see  me?"  I  prompted  him.  "I  don't  think 
I  remember  you.  .  .  ." 

"No,  no,  I  haven't  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  you  be- 
fore," he  began  bravely,  supported  by  the  obvious  correcti- 
tude  of  the  opening.  "The  fact  is — I'm  afraid  this  is  a 
rather  unconventional  call.  You  must  forgive  me.  .  .  . 
I  ..."  He  dropped  his  voice  and  mumbled  something,  of 
which  I  only  caught  the  word  "distressing." 

I  did  not  help  him,  and  he  evidently  found  the  task  of 
explaining  his  call  an  exceedingly  embarrassing  one.  He 
looked  down,  frowned,  and  tapped  with  his  fingers  on  the 
table.  He  kept  his  gaze  fixed  on  his  finger  exercises  as  he 
continued:  "The  fact  is  ...  I  don't  know  if  you've  been 
long  in  this  house  .  .  .  perhaps  you  don't  know  any  of  the 
other — residents  ?" 

He  waited,  without  looking  up,  for  my  reply. 

"Some  of  them,"  I  said. 

"You  may  have  met  a  Mrs.  Hargreave?"  he  suggested, 
still  staring  at  the  tablecloth. 

"Yes,"  I  agreed  tepidly. 

And  then  the  colour  of  his  rather  ruddy  face  deepened 
to  purple,  he  threw  himself  on  my  mercy. 

"I  am  her  husband,"  he  said,  and  I  think  if  he  had  looked 
at  me  honestly  I  might  have  been  sorry  for  him.  I  had 


PROGRESS  175 

certainly  championed  his  cause  in  that  talk  with  Hill;  but 
he  looked  so  prosperous,  and  yet  so  furtive,  that  I  could 
not,  now,  bring  myself  to  pity  him. 

"I  know  Mrs.  Hargreave  very  slightly,"  I  said. 

"Oh!  precisely,  I  quite  understand  that,"  he  returned. 
"And  I  don't  suppose  for  a  moment  that  you  know  any- 
thing about  her  history." 

"I  know  something,"  I  said. 

"You  know  that  she  deserted  me  and  our  children," 
he  said  in  a  low,  solemn  voice. 

My  annoyance  with  the  man  was  steadily  growing.  "A 
friend  of  mine  told  me  something  of  the  kind,"  I  admitted, 
"but  really  I  don't  know  what  it  has  got  to  do  with  me." 

"I  suppose  she  has  a  great  many  friends  in  the  house?" 
he  asked. 

"I  don't  know,"  I  said. 

"Are  the  other  people  here  mostly  women?" 

I  believe  I  had  some  vague  idea  of  defending  the  char- 
acter of  the  house  when  I  replied:  "Oh!  dear,  no!  mostly 
men." 

Hargreave  nodded  thoughtfully.  "Keppel  Street,  of 
course,  has  a  bad  name,"  he  said,  "but  it  doesn't  follow  that 
every  house  in  it  .  .  ." 

He  obviously  meant  me  to  help  him  out  of  that,  but  I 
preferred  to  keep  silence. 

He  waited  a  moment  or  two  before  he  went  on :  "I  hope 
you  will  forgive  me,  Mr.  Hornby;  I  know  how  unconven- 
tional all  this  must  seem  to  you.  I  am  truly  sorry  to  be 
disturbing  you  like  this.  But  would  you  mind  answering 
one  question?  Would  you  mind  telling  me  if  Mrs.  Har- 
greave receives  many  visitors  here — er — in  the  evening,  for 
instance?  I  don't  mean  to  imply  that  you  would  know 
such  a  thing — I  admit  it  is  impertinent  to  ask  you,  at  all — 
except  for  the  fact  of  your — your  position — in  the  house, 
I  mean  .  .  .  your  window  ...  so  near  the  front  door, 
and  so  on." 

I  thought  his  trouble  had  slightly  turned  his  brain,  but 
I  was  still  unable  to  summon  up  the  least  feeling  of  sym- 


176  HOUSE-MATES 

pathy  with  his  distress.  My  only  wish  was  to  be  rid  of 
him.  I  stood  up. 

"I'm  sorry  I  can't  help  you,"  I  said.  "When  I  am  at  the 
window,  I  am  always  working,  and  I  don't  keep  any  sort 
of  watch  on  the  front  doer." 

He  got  to  his  feet,  also,  and  began  to  collect  his  be- 
longings. "Then  you've  no  idea?"  he  said,  as  he  began 
his  retreat  to  the  hall. 

"Absolutely  none,"  I  said,  and  showed  him  out. 

On  reflection  I  decided  that  the  man  was  jealous;  and 
that  was  the  explanation  I  put  forward  when  I  told  the 
story  to  Hill,  whom  I  caught  in  the  hall  a  few  minutes  after 
Hargreave  had  gone. 

Hill  was  in' a  hurry.  He  was  going  down  to  Fleet  Street 
with  his  notice  of  the  first  performance  he  had  attended 
the  night  before,  and  he  agreed  without  consideration.  "I'll 
tell  Mrs.  H.  when  she  comes  back,"  he  said,  as  he  went  out. 

I  had  a  re-action  that  evening  after  tea. 

I  liked  Hill,  and  we  had  made,  I  thought,  a  great  ad- 
vance towards  friendship  that  morning,  but  I  blamed  him 
for  being  too  casual.  I  began  to  think  over  that  reported 
fragment  of  conversation  at  the  theatre,  and  wondered  why 
it  should  have  been  so  inconclusive.  If  they  were  agreed 
that  Miss  Binstead  was  being  silly  about  me,  why  had  not 
Miss  Carrington  come  down  to  Hill's  room?  Why  had 
not  Hill  urged  her  to  come?  As  far  as  I  could  see,  the 
present  state  of  affairs  might  go  on  indefinitely. 

Also,  for  some  reason  that  I  did  not  care  to  examine, 
I  was  a  little  uneasy  concerning  Miss  Carrington's  friend- 
ship wjth  Hill.  He  seemed  to  be  very  much  in  her  con- 
fidence. Helen  Binstead  was  not  jealous  of  him,  but  cer- 
tainly her  judgments  were  not  infallible.  It  was  absurd 
that  she  should  be  jealous  of  me.  If  she  were  jealous? 
After  all,  it  was  quite  probable  that  my  original  judgment 
was  correct,  that  she  had  taken  a  violent  dislike  to  me, 
and  deliberately  encouraged  her  hatred  by  continually  mis- 
reading my  actions  and  what  she  judged  to  be  my  inten- 
tions. 


PROGRESS  177 

As  to  the  Hargreaves,  I  was  inclined  to  dismiss  them 
from  my  thoughts.  I  had  decided,  like  Alice,  that  "they 
were  both  very  unpleasant  characters." 

I  was  back  in  my  shell  again  that  evening. 


I  had  new  lights  on  the  Hargreave  case  two  days  later. 
Mrs.  Hargreave  came  down  to  my  room  after  tea.  I  was 
working,  but  she  made  no  apology  for  interrupting  me,  al- 
though I  stood  by  my  drawing-board,  pencil  in  hand,  waiting 
for  her  to  explain  the  object  of  her  visit. 

"I  hear  that  my  husband  has  been  to  see  you,"  she  began, 
and  sat  down  with  a  confidence  that  entirely  ignored  my 
occupation. 

"Yes,  he  came  in  Sunday,"  I  replied  snappishly. 

"To  ask  questions  about  me?" 

"Yes,"  I  said,  and  by  way  of  usefully  rilling  the  time 
I  sharpened  my  pencil. 

"Is  your  work  very  important,  Mr.  Hornby?"  was  her 
next  question. 

I  made  a  little  doubtful  noise  that  might  have  meant 
anything. 

"Or  were  your  sympathies  engaged  by  my  husband's 
grievances  ?"  she  went  on,  with  a  faint  air  of  chaffing  me. 

"They  most  certainly  were  not,"  I  replied  with  emphasis. 

"You  didn't  like  him?"  she  asked,  pretending  surprise. 

"No,"  I  said. 

"But  you  think  7  ought  to?" 

I  shrugged  my  shoulders.  "I  can  not  see  what  your 
matrimonial  troubles  have  to  do  with  me,"  I  said. 

She  smiled.  "You  don't  believe  in  helping  other  people  ?" 
she  remarked,  and  something  in  her  tone  reminded  me 
that  I  had  recently  been  blaming  Hill  for  not  helping  me 
in  the  Binstead  affair. 

"Oh !  well,  no ;  it  isn't  that  exactly,"  I  said. 

"But  .  .  ."  she  helped  me. 


178  HOUSE-MATES 

I  was  not  sure,  but  it  seemed  safe  to  suggest  that  hers 
was  not  a  case  in  which  I  cared  to  take  one  side  or  the 
other. 

"I  may  take  it  that  you  didn't  answer  my  husband's  ques- 
tions, then?"  she  said. 

"I  did  not,"  I  returned.    "I  was  distinctly  rude  to  him." 

"Yes.    I  can  believe  that,"  she  commented  thoughtfully. 

"I  don't  think  I'm  usually  rude  to  people,"  I  asserted,  but 
she  took  no  notice  of  that. 

"Did  you  snub  him  out  of  existence  at  once,"  she  went 
on,  "or  did  you  get  any  idea  of  what  he  wanted  to  know 
about  me?" 

"I  inferred  that  he  was  jealous,"  I  said.  "He  asked  me 
if  you  had  many  visitors — in  the  evening — and  that  sort  of 
thing;  and  I  told  him  I  had  no  idea.  He  seemed  to  think 
that  I  spend  my  time  watching  the  front  door." 

"He  wants  to  divorce  me,  you  see,"  Mrs.  Hargreave 
explained. 

I  was  startled  into  a  new  interest.  "Well,  you  wouldn't 
be  sorry  if  he  did,  would  you?"  I  asked. 

"How  very  unconventional  of  you,"  she  said  with  a 
laugh. 

I  had  not  thought  of  that.  "But  you  want  to  be  free, 
don't  you  ?"  I  asked. 

"Not  on  those  terms,"  she  told  me,  and  then  continued: 
"But  as  you've  said,  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  you." 

"I'm  interested,  nevertheless,"  I  said. 

"You're  an  odd  mixture,  Mr.  Hornby,"  she  returned; 
"a  cross  between  a  live  human  being  and  the  bundles  of 
convention  that  generally  try  to  pass  themselves  off  as  live 
people.  Do  you  think  you've  a  chance  of  being  born  soon, 
or  are  you  trying  to  shut  yourself  tighte'r  into  your  coffin 
or  whatever  you  call  it?" 

I  found  that  question  worth  a  moment's  consideration. 
I  had  not  adopted  my  metaphor  at  that  time,  but  I  was 
dimly  aware  of  some  change  that  was  taking  place  in  me. 

"I  think  I've  altered  a  good  deal  since  I  came  to  this 
house,"  I  said. 


PROGRESS  179 

Mrs.  Hargreave  nodded  encouragingly.  "It's  a  queer  lit- 
tle world,  this  house,"  she  agreed.  "Queerer  than  I  thought 
if  it's  bringing  you  out  of  your  shell,"  she  added. 

I  came  back  to  a  contemplation  of  that  remark  after- 
wards, but  at  the  time  I  was  too  anxious  to  divert  the 
conversation  from  this  criticism  of  myself  to  take  any 
notice. 

"I  don't  see  why  you  object  to  Mr.  Hargreave  wanting 
to  ..."  I  began,  and  hesitated.  Any  frank  statement 
seemed,  I  thought,  too  brutal. 

"To  divorce  me  ?"  she  put  in  calmly. 

I  nodded.    "You  want  your  freedom,  don't  you  ?"  I  said. 

She  had  been  so  sane  and  quiet  up  to  this  point  that 
I  had  completely  forgotten  her  tirade  upstairs  after  the 
Whiting  business. 

"I  suppose  men  of  your  sort  will  never  understand  our 
position,"  she  said  in  a  new  tone,  and  before  I  could  cut 
her  off,  she  began  again  on  the  admittedly  hopeless  task 
of  enlightening  me. 

I  can  understand  her,  now,  but  sane  and  reasonable  as 
her  "principle"  now  appears  to  me,  she  was,  I  must  admit, 
a  very  unconvincing  pleader.  She  was  so  dogmatic  and 
so  restricted  when  she  mounted  that  platform.  She  would 
not  permit  the  hint  of  any  alternative  to  her  doctrine.  She 
belonged  to  the  older  woman's  rights  school,  and  was  one 
of  those  who  carried  over  their  fanaticism  into  the  "Mili- 
tant Suffragette"  movement. 

Her  "right,"  as  she  put  it  to  me  that  evening,  was  the 
right  of  occupation  and  self-expression.  She  had  done  with 
child-bearing,  and  she  did  not  ask  for  sexual  love,  or  for 
sexual  admiration.  She  demanded  possibilities  for  the  free- 
ing of  her  individuality,  but  she  would  not  accept  them 
at  the  cost  of  admitting  herself  in  the  wrong.  That,  in- 
deed, was  her  "principle." 

"My  husband  can  only  imagine  one  reason  for  my  leav- 
ing him,"  she  said;  "the  only  reason  that  would  appeal  to 
him."  (Incidentally,  I  believed  that.)  "So,  now,  he  wants 
to  make  things  easy  for  himself — he  wants  to  marry  again, 


180  HOUSE-MATES 

of  course — by  divorcing  me.  And  why  should  I  confess 
to  a  weakness  of  that  kind?  I  would  acknowledge  it  in 
a  moment,  if  I  had  it,  but  I'm  not  going  to  put  myself 
in  the  wrong  just  to  satisfy  his  sexual  cravings." 

She  had  no  sort  of  sympathy  with  her  husband,  and  I 
still  think  that  she  was  wrong  in  that  exclusion.  She  was 
so  fanatic  when  it  came  to  any  attack  on  that  tremendous 
"right"  of  hers.  She  clenched  her  mind,  as  it  were,  in 
a  final  resolution  never  to  give  one  least  advantage  to  all 
that  immense  mass  of  opinion  which  was  embodied  for 
her  in  the  person  of  Hargreave.  She  was  of  the  stuff  that 
makes  martyrs,  but  some  martyrs  are  merely  pig-headed. 

The  effect  of  her  argument  upon  me  was  to  put  my  back 
up.  Women  were  putting  men's  backs  up  even  then,  some 
years  before  they  made  a  regular  profession  of  it.  And 
I  should  probably  have  attempted  some  perfectly  useless 
defence  if  we  had  not  been  interrupted  by  a  tap  at  the 
door. 

Mrs.  Hargreave  did  not  hear  it,  and  it  is  possible  that  my 
"Come  in"  was  also  inaudible  above  the  steady  eloquence 
of  her  exposition,  but  she  stopped  when  the  door  opened. 
I  think  it  must  have  been  the  change  of  expression  in  my 
face  and  attitude  that  startled  her. 


VI 

I  received  a  smile  that  I  counted  as  my  first — the  other 
was  not  meant  for  me — and  then  she  turned  to  Mrs.  Har- 
greave, who  was  now  looking  round  over  her  shoulder, 
and  said :  "I  suppose  you've  completely  forgotten  that  you're 
taking  me  to  the  theatre  to-night?" 

Mrs.  Hargreave  got  up  at  once.  "My  dear,  is  it  so  late  ?" 
she  said.  "Mr.  Hornby  and  I  have  been  arguing."  (I  had 
not  said  a  word  since  she  had  opened  her  pet  subject.) 
"Wait  for  me  while  I  just  go  upstairs.  It  will  do  if  I 
change  my  blouse,  I  suppose  ?  Where's  Helen  ?" 

"She's  up  there,"  Judith  said.  "We've  been  quarrelling, 
rather." 


PROGRESS  181 

I  had  an  instant's  hope  that  I  was  the  subject  of  it. 
And  here  was  my  longed  for  opportunity:  Mrs.  Hargreave 
had  gone  and  I  was  alone  with  Judith  and  free  to  make 
any  explanation  I  wished.  And  I  had  not  a  word  to  say. 
I  had  not  an  idea  how  to  begin  the  most  formal  con- 
versation. 

"She  is  rather  splendid,  isn't  she?"  Judith  said.  The 
door  was  still  open  and  she  sat  down  near  it  in  a  desolate, 
unfriendly  chair  that  had  been  left  alone  to  furnish  that 
bleak  corner. 

"Mrs.  Hargreave?    Oh!  yes,  rather,"  I  said. 

"She  is  so  tremendously  in  earnest." 

I  repeated  my  former  remark. 

After  that  came  a  silence  that  began  to  grow  embar- 
rassing. I  was  standing  up  by  my  drawing-board  and  the 
whole  length  of  the  room  separated  us,  but  I  was  afraid 
to  move. 

"I'm  interrupting  you,"  she  said  after  a  tense  interval. 
"Do  go  on  working." 

"Oh!  no!  I'm  not,"  I  said  eagerly.  "I  wasn't  working 
when  you  came  in,  I  mean." 

She  was  almost  invisible  in  the  shadow  of  her  corner  by 
the  door,  and  I  wished  that  I  could  get  over  to  the  hearth- 
rug, but  I  felt  unequal  to  that  undertaking.  I  found  some 
small  consolation  in  the  reflection  that  it  was  her  turn 
to  speak. 

"We're  going  to  see  'Zaza,' "  she  said.  "Do  you  know 
it?" 

"No,  I  don't,"  I  replied.    "I've  heard  it's  rather  good." 

"Mrs.  Hargreave  has  only  got  two  seats.  That's  why 
Miss  Binstead  isn't  coming,"  she  explained  inconsequently. 

I  made  my  first  sane  comment  then  by  saying:  "Your 
quarrel  wasn't  serious?" 

She  laughed.    "Oh!  no,"  she  assured  me. 

It  was  an  opening.  I  had  only  to  say  that  I  was  afraid 
Miss  Binstead  didn't  like  me,  and  the  thing  was  prac- 
tically done.  Instead  of  that  I  said: 


182  HOUSE-MATES 

"You  go  to  the  theatre  pretty  often,  I  suppose?" 

"Whenever  I  can,"  she  replied. 

And  the  precious  remainder  of  that  solemn  ten  min- 
utes was  spent  in  bandying  the  stupid  clinches  of  a  suburban 
tea-party. 

VII 

I  was  not  alone  with  her  again  for  six  weeks.  I  have 
a  strong  inclination  to  jump  that  interval.  I  am  hampered 
again  by  my  characteristic  distaste  for  speaking  or  writing 
of  things  that  touch  some  tender  pride  of  my  inner  life. 

I  could  not  discuss  my  brief  religious  ecstasy  with  my 
mother.  I  was  afraid  of  exposing  it  to  the  least  criticism, 
even  though  that  criticism  took  the  form  of  mistaken  praise. 
I  knew  that  my  mother  would  translate  my  emotions  into 
the  terms  of  her  own  worship,  and  I  was  as  sensitive  as 
any  artist  who  dreads  that  the  meaning  of  his  work  will  be 
misinterpreted.  I  was  so  keenly  aware  of  the  beauty  of  my 
own  emotions  that  I  dared  not  express  them. 

My  disinclination  to  speak  of  my  engagement  to  Gladys 
in  the  presence  of  Geddes,  or  Kemplay,  or  Horton-Smith 
was  another  symptom  of  the  same  weakness.  I  knew  that 
the  strained  exaggeration  of  the  stereotyped  phrases  we  use 
to  describe  beauty  would  not  produce  a  true  impression  upon 
their  minds.  It  was  not  that  I  was  afraid  to  do  Gladys 
any  injustice,  my  feeling  was  still  personal ;  egotistical  per- 
haps. Her  beauty  was  the  thing  7  saw.  In  a  sense  I  had 
created  it  by  my  vision  of  her.  If  Geddes,  for  example, 
had  met  and  admired  her,  he  would  still  have  failed  to 
appreciate  the  work  of  art  I  treasured  in  my  own  mind. 
Gladys,  however,  herself  destroyed  that  illusion  and  set  me 
free  to  describe  her.  After  my  image  had  been  broken,  I 
saw  her  with  even  more  critical  eyes  than  Geddes  would 
have  brought  to  his  appraisal.  In  the  same  way,  when  my 
religious  ecstasy  faded  I  could  smile — a  little  tenderly, 
nevertheless — at  my  exhausted  emotion  of  worship.  But, 


PROGRESS  183 

now,  I  have  a  treasure  of  beauty  that  fills  my  whole  life, 
and  I  dread  to  belittle  it  by  the  weakness  of  my  artistry. 

Indeed,  I  am  not  a  true  artist.  I  have  the  power  of 
conception,  but  not  of  creation.  In  my  drawing,  as  in  my 
writing,  I  present  but  the  pale,  weak  model  of  my  desire. 

And  in  this  thing  that  I  am  now  stumbling  at,  there  is, 
in  fact,  no  medium  which  would  portray  my  thought  of 
Judith  clear  and  whole.  I  can  at  the  best  only  suggest 
an  outline  which  will  take  shape  in  the  reader's  mind  as 
the  figure  or  index  of  a  type.  It  is  so  futile  to  write  that 
the  colour  of  her  eyes  was  a  live,  clear  grey;  that  her  hair 
was  brown  with  a  kind  of  petulant  twist  which  asserted  its 
individuality  against  the  most  patient  endeavour  of  any 
hair-dresser;  that  her  nose  was  straight  and  rather  long; 
or  that  her  teeth  were  white  as  the  sudden  foam  on  a 
dark  sea. 

Such  a  foolish  catalogue  as  this,  however  prolonged, 
gives  no  effect  of  the  particular  quality  her  beauty  had 
for  me.  Another  woman  might  have  her  features  and 
colouring  and  fail  completely  to  attract  my  notice — I  might 
even  criticise  such  a  woman ;  say  that  she  was  plain.  Per- 
haps Judith  may  be  plain.  If  there  is  some  idealised  abso- 
lute of  feminine  beauty,  I  can  very  well  understand  that 
she  would  fail  to  pass  the  test  such  an  ideal  would  im- 
pose. Men  do  not  turn  to  look  after  her  in  the  street. 

But  to  me,  from  that  moment  she  turned  and  unknowingly 
smiled  up  at  my  window,  she  was  the  perfect  woman.  And 
I  knew  it  without  any  further  possible  shadow  of  doubt 
from  the  time  she  sat  on  that  lonely  chair  by  the  door, 
and  the  two  of  us,  nervous  and  trembling,  approached  the 
knowledge  that  this  was  a  meeting  beyond  any  remem- 
bered experience.  We  talked  nonsense,  and  I  am  glad, 
now,  to  remember  how  foolish  I  was.  I  had  come  all  un- 
prepared into  the  presence  of  something  that  was  wonder- 
ful and  eternal,  something  out  of  space  and  time;  and  I 
feel  that  it  was  appropriate  that  I  should  have  blushed  and 
stammered  and  confessed  my  ineptitude. 

And  most  certainly  I  could  neither  have  drawn  her  that 


184  HOUSE-MATES 

evening,  nor  have  told  the  colour  of  her  eyes,  nor  whether 
her  nose  was  long  or  short. 

What  could  it  matter  how  she  looked? 

She  was  Judith, 


IX 

THE  TWO  AUSTRALIANS 


THE  general  impression  of  those  six  weeks  remains  in 
my  mind  now  with  something  like  the  effect  of  a  train 
journey.  My  attention  was  continually  being  snatched  by 
the  incidents  of  every-day  life,  and  some  of  them  come 
back  to  me  with  the  vividness  of  a  scene  observed  through 
a  window.  But  the  dominant  effect  is  of  my  longing  to 
get  to  the  journey's  end.  I  was  travelling  towards  some 
goal  that  I  could  not  visualise,  but  that  was  undoubtedly  a 
resting  place;  and  until  I  reached  it  all  else  was  nothing 
but  a  momentary  distraction. 

I  cannot,  however,  fit  my  occasional  sights  of  Judith  into 
the  metaphor.  They  constituted  stopping-places  that  have 
no  parallel  in  the  tedious  movement  of  a  train  journey.  For 
it  was,  indeed,  only  during  those  short  hours  when  I  was 
no  longer  conscious  of  travel  that  I  made  any  real  prog- 
ress— although  there  were  times  when  those  intervals  seemed 
to  indicate  that  I  was  flying  horribly  backwards. 

I  was  groping,  then,  in  the  black  darkness  that  surrounds 
the  unintuitive  young  lover;  or  it  may  be,  rather,  that  I 
was  too  intuitive  and  that  my  intuitions  springing  from  a 
purely  masculine  psychology  were,  now  and  then,  gro- 
tesquely false.  Certainly,  my  deductions  could  not  have 
been  influenced  by  any  sane  logic.  I  was  immensely  en- 
couraged or  disheartened  by  the  most  trivial  suggestions; 
and  in  some  instances  I  completely  overlooked  indications 
that  had  a  real  significance. 

185 


186  HOUSE-MATES 

Helen  Binstead  was  the  chief  cause  of  my  misinterpre- 
tations. I  had,  happily,  lost  my  obsession  concerning  her 
omnipotence  for  evil,  but  I  still  recognised  that  she  was 
my  one  important  enemy — and  in  that  inference,  at  least, 
I  was  not  deceived.  Where  I  made  so  important  a  mis- 
take was  in  my  failure  to  understand  her  relations  with 
Judith. 

Writing,  now,  with  a  more  or  less  clear  explanation 
of  those  once  mysterious  signs,  I  can  smile  at  my  own  blind- 
ness; but  as  I  enter  again  into  the  feelings  I  experienced 
during  that  six  weeks,  I  know  that  it  was  impossible  I 
should  have  interpreted  what  I  took  for  evidence,  in  any 
other  way. 

II 

Judith  and  Helen  Binstead  were  in  Hill's  room  on  the 
Sunday  following  our  first  tete-a-tete.  I  had  seen  Mrs. 
Hargreave  again  in  the  interval,  but  she  was  not  there  that 
morning.  There  were,  however,  three  other  people  present 
besides  Hill,  himself:  namely,  an  actor  and  his  wife  and 
little  Herz.  The  actor — I  have  forgotten  his  name — was 
playing  at  a  West  End  theatre,  and  he  had  been  invited 
to  meet  Judith,  with  the  idea — as  I  soon  learnt  with  a 
strange  twinge  of  dismay — of  helping  her  to  obtain  an  en- 
gagement in  a  travelling  company  that  was  going  out  after 
Christmas  with  the  piece  that  he  was  playing  in  at,  I  think 
it  was,  the  Criterion. 

The  actor  was  a  smallish  man  with  a  good  deal  of  man- 
ner, and  I  wondered  what  influence  he  could  possibly  have 
in  recommending  Miss  Carrington.  He  was  quite  unknown 
to  me  by  name,  and  dropped  out  of  the  theatrical  world 
years  ago,  but  it  appeared  that  he  was  a  popular  member 
of  a  club  called  the  "Green  Room"  in  Leicester  Square, 
and  that  quite  a  lot  of  theatrical  log-rolling  was  done  from 
that  centre. 

His  wife  was  a  tall,  elaborate  looking  woman  with  a 
collection  of  handsome  features  that  did  not  harmonise  well 


THE  TWO  AUSTRALIANS  187 

when  they  were  seen  at  close  quarters,  but  might  have 
been  effective  on  the  stage.  I  do  not  remember  that  she 
added  much  to  the  conversation,  but  she  went  in  for  ex- 
pressive gesture  on  suitable  occasions,  and  had  a  habit 
of  commenting  on  Hill's  stories — he  told  several  that  morn- 
ing a  propos  of  stage  life — by  staring  immensely  into  the 
circumambient  and  saying  "Isn't — that — Rich!"  in  a  voice 
that  was  meant  to  exhibit  the  amazing  depths  of  her 
appreciation. 

I  sat  on  a  pile  of  books  by  the  wall  and  said  nothing. 
I  was  out  of  my  element  and  knew  it,  but  I  was  always 
dumb  in  Judith's  presence  after  that  first  bright  exception 
on  the  day  of  our  introduction.  What  I  longed  to  say  was 
that  life  in  a  provincial  touring  company  was  quite  unsuit- 
able for  Miss  Carrington,  but  I  had  not  the  courage  for 
that.  So  I  kept  silence  and  watched  her  when  I  dared. 

Curiously  enough  my  chief  source  of  encouragement  was 
at  the  same  time  a  cause  of  uneasiness  on  another  score. 
Judith  herself  responded  with  very  little  warmth  to  the 
actor's  bustling  assurance  that  he  could  certainly  get  her 
the  part.  He  pretended  a  kind  of  examination,  at  first, 
and  I  loathed  the  way  he  looked  at  her,  but  he  cut  that 
piece  of  acting  very  quickly,  and  came  to  the  part  he  found 
more  sympathetic :  to  the  playing  of  the  patron  and  man 
of  influence.  (I  can  see  his  spruce  little  figure,  now;  he 
was  dressed  in  a  grey  suit  that  had  an  appearance  of  being 
sharp  at  the  edges,  with  a  little  black  and  white  check  bow 
that  perked  neatly  out  of  his  double  collar;  and  lavender 
suede  gloves  that  he  kept  in  his  hand  and  used  to  gesticu- 
late with.  And  his  boots  were  quite  the  richest  brown  I 
have  ever  seen.) 

I  was  delighted  that  his  boast  of  patronage  produced  so 
little  effect  upon  Miss  Carrington,  but  I  wished  that  her 
rather  cool  reception  of  his  assurances  had  been  due  to 
another  cause.  For  after  she  had  thanked  him,  she  made 
it  plain  that  she  would  not  accept  the  part  unless  there  were 
a  place  for  Helen  in  the  same  company. 

I  wish  I  could  describe  the  way  she  spoke.     Her  voice 


188  HOUSE-MATES 

and  manner  contrasted  so  delightfully  with  the  glib  insin- 
cerity of  the  actor  and  his  wife — and  Helen  Binstead,  too, 
had  caught  something  of  that  theatrical  intensity  which 
can  give  a  false  value  to  the  simplest  expression.  But  Ju- 
dith, even  then,  had  an  earnestness  that  showed  through 
her  girlish  embarrassment.  She  blushed  when  she  answered 
the  man,  and  she  did  not  use  words  like  "awfully"  or 
"frightfully."  Her  speech  had  been  pruned  by  those  two  old 
Puritans  with  whom  she  had  lived  for  five  years ;  and  if 
her  zest  for  life  had  been  strong  enough  to  revolt  against 
confinement  within  those  little  spaces  to  which  they  would 
have  restricted  her,  something  of  their  influence,  perhaps 
of  their  timidity,  still  remained  with  her. 

The  actor  pursed  his  mouth  and  thoughtfully  smacked 
his  left  hand  with  his  gloves. 

"If  we  could  find  a  part  for  Miss  Binstead?"  he  repeated. 
"There  isn't  one  at  present,  but  I  might  get  hold  of  the 
author  and  ask  him  to  write  one  in  for  her." 

Helen's  eyes  glowed  at  him  not  less  than  her  speech,  but 
I  saw  Hill's  smile  and  knew  by  that  how  grotesque  had 
been  the  little  man's  boast. 

"Get  him  to  write  a  play  for  them  while  you're  about 
it,"  Hill  put  in. 

"I  happen  to  know  him  very  well,  you  know,"  the  actor 
went  on,  quite  unruffled.  "In  fact,  in  a  way  I  discovered 
him.  Gave  him  his  first  chance,  and  he  hasn't  forgotten 
it.  And,  besides  that,  I've  helped  him  with  his  stage  tech- 
nique. He's  a  clever  chap,  but  simply  knew  nothing  about 
the  stage  when  he  began  to  write." 

(He  mentioned  the  author's  name  at  least  four  times  dur- 
ing that  speech,  but  I  prefer  not  to  repeat  it.) 

"If  you  could  find  a  part  for  Miss  Binstead  ?"  Judith  put 
in  when  she  found  a  chance.  "Even  an  understudy  .  .  ." 

"Ah !"  the  little  actor  man  interrupted.  "An  understudy ! 
What  do  you  think,  Delia?" 

"For  Mrs.  Henniker?"  his  wife  answered,  as  if  she  were 
debating  a  plan  to  save  the  nation. 

"For  Mrs.  Henniker !"  he  repeated  with  an  air  of  sudden 


THE  TWO  AUSTRALIANS  189 

conviction.  "You've  hit  it,  Delia.  We'll  put  Miss  Bin- 
stead  in  to  understudy  Muriel  Gordon." 

Judith  was  warmer  in  her  expression  of  gratitude  this 
time,  but  I  was  not  afraid.  I  had  been  watching  Hill,  and 
guessed  that  these  two  engagements  would  never  be  made. 

He  confirmed  my  supposition  as  soon  as  the  actor  and  his 
wife  had  gone. 

"I'm  sorry,"  he  said,  addressing  Helen  and  Judith;  "but 
I  never  thought  it  was  much  use." 

I  expected  Helen  to  resent  that.  She  had  glowed  again 
at  the  little  actor,  after  he  had  definitely  booked  her  to 
understudy  Miss  Muriel  Gordon;  but  she  took  it  quite 
quietly. 

"Of  course  they  wouldn't  take  out  a  special  understudy 
on  a  tour  like  that,"  she  said.  "Judith  would  understudy 
Miss  Gordon  if  she  played  'Jenny.' " 

I  leant  back  against  the  wall  in  pure  amazement.  I  am 
not  sure  that  my  mouth  was  not  open. 

Hill  grinned.  "Friend  Hornby  isn't  used  to  our  stage 
currency,"  he  said.  "That's  the  way  we  go  on,  you  know. 
It's  a  kind  of  Eastern  diplomacy  without  the  dignity." 

I  found  a  voice  at  last.  "He  offers  you  something  he 
knows  isn't  possible,"  I  said,  "and  you  know  it  isn't  pos- 
sible. .  .  ." 

"Yes,  and  he  knows  that  you  know  it  isn't  possible,"  Hill 
concluded. 

"And  all  the  same  ...   ?"  I  said. 

"We  part  with  a  very  fine  opinion  of  ourselves  and  of 
each  other,"  Hill  said.  "But,  mark  one  stipulation,  all  of 
us  here,  except  Helen,  are  amateurs.  There  was  a  big 
gallery." 

"Deliver  me!"  I  remarked  elliptically  and  looked  up  to 
find  that  Judith  was  watching  me  with,  I  thought,  a  distinct 
frown  of  disapproval. 

"Don't  you  ..."  I  began  timidly,  but  Miss  Binstead  cut 
me  short. 

"Of  course,  you're  not  used  to  it,"  she  said,  glowering 


190  HOUSE-MATES 

at  me.  "I  suppose  you  think  I  was  very  insincere  to  say 
what  I  did." 

I  was  honest  enough  to  shrug  my  shoulders,  and  then 
little  Herz  came  between  us  by  saying: 

"It  is  the  same  with  artists  and  with  musicians.  I  have 
seen  it.  To  keep  up  the  appearance  makes  so  much  with 
them." 

"And  don't  you  think  he  meant  it  about  my  part,  either  ?" 
Judith  asked,  looking  at  Hill. 

"He  meant  it  all  right,"  Hill  replied.  "But  I  don't  think 
he  really  has  much  influence.  Still,  he  might  work  that." 

"I  shan't  take  it,"  Judith  said,  standing  up;  and  she  put 
an  affectionate  arm  round  Miss  Binstead's  shoulders.  < 

I  went  downstairs,  very  depressed.  I  could  not  under- 
stand that  friendship,  nor  the  attraction  of  the  stage. 
Neither  accorded  with  my  worshipping  of  Judith,  and  yet 
I  worshipped  her  none  the  less.  I  felt  that,  if  only  I  could 
talk  to  her,  she  would  make  it  all  clear  to  me.  Also,  I 
wondered  why  my  criticism  of  the  little  actor's  insincerity 
and  swagger  had  offended  her.  For  woven  deep  into  the 
fabric  of  my  subconsciousness  was  the  certainty  that  in 
some  way  she  and  I  knew  each  other  quite  intimately. 


in 

I  believe  that  Basil  Meares  and  his  wife  must  have  joined 
our  community  just  about  this  time.  They  took  the  place 
of  two  of  the  Germans  who  had  shared  a  bedroom  and  a 
sitting-room  on  the  second  floor  and  who  had  held  no  com- 
munication with  the  rest  of  us,  not  even  with  their  own 
countrymen. 

Meares  was  a  tall,  dark,  handsome  man  with  a  black 
beard  trimmed  to  a  neat  point  that  gave  him  the  look  of 
a  naval  captain.  His  wife  was  a  bright  little  brown-eyed 
creature,  with  all  too  evident  false  teeth.  Hill  made  their 
acquaintance  before  they  had  been  in  the  house  ten  days, 
and  I  met  them  in  his  room  for  the  first  time  one  Sun- 


THE  TWO  AUSTRALIANS  191 

day — I  think  it  must  have  been  about  the  second  week  in 
November. 

They  came  from  Australia,  and  both  of  them  had  Aus- 
tralian accents.  Meares  had  a  mining  property — or  an  op- 
tion on  one — somewhere  up  country,  and  had  come  over 
to  London  to  form  a  company  to  develop  it.  He  was  a 
grave,  quiet  chap  who  seemed  content  to  listen  to  our 
conversation,  and  only  spoke  when  he  was  directly  ad- 
dressed. His  wife,  however,  had  an  eager  flow  of  chatter; 
and  I  remember  being  struck  by  her  longing  to  see  snow. 
She  often  expressed  the  hope  that  it  was  going  to  be  a 
hard  winter.  She  had  lived  in  New  South  Wales  all  her 
life  and  had  never,  as  she  explained,  seen  snow  falling,  al- 
though she  had  once  or  twice  seen  it,  from  a  distance,  lying 
on  the  upper  slopes  of  Mount  Townsend. 

I  thought  the  Meares  a  very  uninteresting  couple  at  first, 
but  Hill  did  not  agree  with  me. 

"If  only  they  would  tell  us  something  about  Australia," 
I  said  to  him  one  day,  "they  might  amuse  us  a  little." 

"If  they  would  tell  us  something  about  their  past  lives," 
he  amended. 

"Nothing  to  tell,"  I  suggested. 

"People  aren't  usually  so  careful  to  hide  nothing,"  he 
said. 

"Oh!  well,  do  they?"  I  asked.  "They  simply  don't  talk 
about  anything." 

"She  does,"  Hill  returned,  "and  so  does  he,  about  his 
business,  when  you  get  him  alone — try  it  and  see.  But 
neither  of  them  has  a  word  to  say  about  what  they  have 
been  doing  for  the  last  ten  years.  We  don't  even  know  what 
boat  they  came  over  in." 

"Don't  delude  yourself  into  finding  a  mystery  about  the 
Meares,"  I  said.  "They  are  as  ordinary  as  I  am." 

And  presently  Mrs.  Meares  became  a  kind  of  ally  of 
mine. 

I  did  not  encourage  her  at  first.  I  was  too  shy  of  any- 
thing approaching  a  confidence  to  take  her  advice,  but  there 
was  for  a  time  an  unspoken  understanding  between  us. 


192  HOUSE-MATES 

She  began  it  by  coming  down  to  my  room  one  morning, 
to  ask  if  I  could  lend  her  a  sheet  of  note  paper.  Mr.  Hill 
was  out,  she  explained,  and  she  did  not  care  to  bother 
the  "young  ladies"  upstairs.  I  believe  the  reason  for  her 
intrusion  was  perfectly  genuine.  She  had  a  colonial  free- 
dom from  the  conventional  hesitations  that  would  have 
stopped  me  in  such  a  case.  And  then,  having  introduced 
the  subject  of  the  "young  ladies,"  she  rattled  on  without 
further  excuse. 

"Miss  Binstead's  rather  one  of  the  stand-off  sort,  isn't 
she?"  Mrs.  Meares  said  confidentially.  "She  scares  me. 
She  looks  at  you  as  if  you  were  trying  to  rob  her  of  some- 
thing. I  don't  mean  'you'  particularly,  of  course — just  any 
one,  unless  it's  Mr.  Hill.  But  then  he's  so  nice  with  every 
one.  You  English  people  are  a  bit  stiff,  aren't  you?  Not 
that  I'm  not  English,  too,  but  we're  different  somehow,  in 
Australia.  .  .  ."  She  elaborated  that  a  little  before  she 
came  back  to  what  was  the  chief  intention  of  her  speech, 
by  saying :  "But  you  do  agree  with  me  about  Miss  Binstead, 
don't  you,  Mr.  Hornby?" 

"Really,  I  hardly  know  her  at  all,"  I  said,  trying  not 
to  conform  too  nearly  to  the  type  of  "stiff"  Englishman 
she  had  indicated. 

"But  Miss  Carrington  is  quite  different,  isn't  she?"  the 
little  woman  ran  on.  "I  do  think  she's  so  good-looking, 
don't  you  ?  That's  the  type  I  admire,  and  I'm  sure  you  must, 
too;  as  an  artist,  now,  Mr.  Hornby?  I  don't  say  she's  the 
type  that  takes  most  men's  fancy;  but  there's  something 
so  steady  about  her,  if  you  know  what  I  mean." 

I  was  horribly  confused  and  a  little  annoyed;  but  at  the 
same  time  I  was  glad  to  have  a  woman  ally.  Mrs.  Har- 
greave  was  not  actively  against  me  as  an  individual,  but 
I  was  a  representative  of  what  was  to  her  the  general  enemy ; 
and  it  was  very  unlikely  that  she  would  do  anything  to  help 
me  in  making  the  nearer  acquaintance  of  the  two  girls  she 
had  accepted  in  a  vague  way  as  disciples. 

I  suppose  I  mumbled  some  qualified  agreement  with  Mrs. 
Meares'  enthusiasm. 


THE  TWO  AUSTRALIANS  193 

She  hesitated  a  moment  as  if  doubtful  whether  she  could 
not  risk  a  franker  statement  and  then  apparently  decided 
to  keep  on  the  safe  ground  of  generalities. 

I  did  not  help  her.  Mixed  with  my  other  feelings  was 
dismay  at  the  thought  that  my  devotion  had  been  so  evi- 
dent. I  wondered  whether  every  one  in  the  house  knew? 
I  remembered  that  on  one  or  two  occasions  I  had  tried  to 
beseech  Judith  with  my  eyes;  and  I  blushed  to  find  that 
Mrs.  Meares,  certainly,  and  perhaps  her  husband  or  Herz, 
had  been  watching  me  and  had  understood. 

My  instinctive  desire  to  cover  my  tracks  took  the  usual 
form  of  an  attempt  to  display  sangfroid.  Mrs.  Meares  had 
drifted  on  into  talk  about  the  stage  and  I  cut  in  by  saying 
that  I  thought  it  a  very  silly  profession.  I  meant  to  make 
it  quite  plain,  at  least,  that  the  stage  had  no  glamour  for  me. 

"I  know  what  you  mean,  Mr.  Hornby,"  Mrs.  Meares  said 
with  a  look  that  was  meant  to  establish  a  confidence.  "If 
I'd  had  a  daughter,  I  should  never  have  thought  of  letting 
her  be  an  actress.  But  it's  just  a  fancy  that  takes  girls 
for  a  time." 

"Oh !  I  dare-say  Miss  Binstead  and  her  friend  may  do  very 
well  on  the  stage,"  I  said,  and  immediately  reproached  my- 
self for  having  been  disloyal.  Yet  as  I  spoke  I  had  been 
proud  of  being  able  to  throw  a  slight  on  Judith's  choice  of 
a  profession. 

Mrs.  Meares  screwed  up  her  bright  little  brown  eyes 
into  a  smile  that  indulged  my  boyishness. 

"I  daresay  they  may — if  they  go  on  with  it,"  she  said, 
and  then  began  to  apologise  for  interrupting  my  work. 
She  had,  however,  a  further  advance  to  make,  before  she 
left  me.  It  came  in  the  middle  of  her  farewell  speech. 

".  .  .  Meares  is  very  interested  in  architecture,"  was 
the  sentence  that  made  the  connection,  and  from  that  she 
came  to  the  fact  of  her  husband's  reserve  being  "nothing 
but  shyness.  He'd  never  have  come  down  interrupting  you 
like  this,"  she  went  on,  "but  he'd  be  right  down  glad  to 
have  a  talk  with  you  any  time,  Mr.  Hornby,  if  you  cared 
to  come  up  in  the  evening." 


194  HOUSE-MATES 

"I  don't  see  why  Mr.  Hill  should  have  it  all  his  own  way," 
she  concluded  gaily.  ''We're  going  to  have  a  club,  too." 

I  thought  over  that  proposition  for  the  rest  of  the  morn- 
ing. When  a  woman  draws  an  inference  she  accepts  it  as 
an  ultimate  and  unchallengeable  fact.  A  man  continues 
to  examine  his  inference  at  leisure,  and  usually  finds  good 
cause  for  doubting  it.  I  had  been  sure  at  the  time  that  the 
little  Australian  was  suggesting  that  I  might  meet  Judith 
in  the  Meares  apartment;  but  by  lunch-time  I  was  per- 
suaded that  she  had  meant  nothing  of  the  kind. 


IV 

Nevertheless  when  two  days  later  I  received  an  invita- 
tion from  the  second  floor,  I  had  no  hesitation  about  the  an- 
swer I  returned.  Mrs.  Meares  had  sent  me  one  of  her  visit- 
ing cards.  She  had  added,  "Mr.  and"  before  the  engraved 
"Mrs.  Basil  Meares,"  and  below  it: — "At  home,  this 
evening — 9  p.m.  to  n  p.m.  Conversation  and  good  com- 
pany." I  acknowledged  the  joke  by  sending  up  a  formal 
note  of  acceptance. 

But  after  I  had  thus  committed  myself,  I  suffered  a 
period  of  uneasiness  and  apprehension.  I  had  no  confi- 
dence in  the  tact  of  my  ally.  My  first  fear  was  that  she 
might  have  sent  a  duplicate  of  that  card  up  to  the  third 
floor;  and  when  I  had  dismissed  that  on  the  ground  that 
such  an  invitation  would  certainly  have  been  refused  by 
Miss  Binstead,  and  that  Mrs.  Meares  must  have  been  sure 
of  her  entertainment  before  she  enticed  me  with  the  promise 
of  "good  company";  I  had  a  horrible  misgiving  that  she 
would  do  something  even  more  foolish  in  the  course  of 
the  evening. 

I  pictured  her  making  obvious  plans  to  give  me  an  op- 
portunity for  talking  alone  with  Judith;  or,  worse  still, 
she  might  drop  some  terrible  hint  to  Judith,  herself !  And 
behind  those  misgivings  I  had,  no  doubt,  a  reluctance  to 
class  myself  with  the  Meares  or  to  accept  any  help  from 


THE  TWO  AUSTRALIANS  195 

them.  I  was  still  too  fresK  from  Hampstead  and  Lin- 
coln's Inn  to  stand  on  my  own  legs,  and  I  was  afraid  that 
I  might  go  down  in  Judith's  opinion  if  I  appeared  on  such 
confidential  terms  with  the  Meares  as  the  demonstration 
of  a  mutual  understanding  would  suggest — an  understanding 
on  that  subject  above  all  others! 

My  apprehensions  were  increased  when  after  I  had  gone 
upstairs  to  find  Mrs.  Meares  and  her  husband  alone  she 
gave  me  a  smile  that  was  an  unmistakable  acknowledg- 
ment of  some  agreement  between  us  and  said,  "We're  sorry 
neither  Mr.  Hill  nor  Miss  Binstead  can  come  after  all; 
they've  gone  to  a  first  night  together,  so  there'll  only  be 
the  four  of  us !" 

I  was  on  the  verge  of  making  some  excuse  to  get  out 
of  the  room  when  Judith  came  in;  and  for  the  first  half 
hour  or  so  afterwards  I  suffered  an  agony  of  nervous- 
ness. I  am  sure  my  manner  was  insufferably  stilted,  and 
whenever  I  looked  at  Mrs.  Meares,  my  eyes,  I  have  been 
told  since,  were  "as  hard  as  steel."  I  certainly  remember 
that  the  one  thought  in  my  mind  was  to  intimidate  her  into 
silence  on  one  particular  topic. 

Perhaps  my  evident  nervousness  had  some  effect  on  Mrs. 
Meares.  Her  behaviour  that  evening  was  certainly  above 
reproach.  I  still  think,  however,  that  my  apprehensions 
were  justified.  I  am  sure  she  was  quite  capable  of  mak- 
ing the  mistake  I  had  dreaded,  but  she  was  extraordinarily 
quick  in  her  intuitions,  and  her  little  brown  eyes  took  note 
of  everything. 

We  were  all  four  a  trifle  embarrassed  during  that  first 
half-hour,  but  afterwards  we  succeeded  in  making  the 
Meares  talk  about  Australia.  She  had  quite  a  lot  of  inter- 
esting information,  and  a  fund  of  little  anecdotes  about  the 
life  inland.  Her  husband  came  in  now  and  again  with  a 
grave  foot-note  of  corroboration. 

I  helped  them  with  intelligent  questions  as  well  as  I 
could  and  tried  not  to  watch  Judith  too  openly.  We  sat  in 
a  semicircle  round  the  fire,  and  she  faced  me  across  the 
width  of  the  hearth-rug,  so  that  unless  I  pointedly  fixed  my 


196  HOUSE-MATES 

attention  on  Mr.  or  Mrs.  Meares,  I  was  conscious  of  a 
difficulty  in  avoiding  Judith's  glance.  I  tried  staring  into 
the  fire,  until  I  saw  that  she  was  doing  that,  too,  and  I  be- 
came afraid  that  our  unanimity  might  appear  concerted. 
When  I  happened  to  meet  her  eyes,  I  tried  to  make  my 
face  blankly  inexpressive.  / 

But  despite  my  immense  preoccupation  with  the  con- 
sciousness of  Judith's  presence,  I  noticed  one  odd  little 
piece  of  confusion  on  the  part  of  Mrs.  Meares. 

She  used  the  word  "hinterland"  instead  of  "up-country" 
and  I  should  certainly  not  have  remarked  the  change  of 
language  if  she  had  not  underlined  it  by  a  most  unneces- 
sary explanation.  She  pulled  herself  up  in  the  middle 
of  the  sentence,  and  her  false  teeth  came  together  with  a 
queer  little  click.  "I  got  that  from  my  brother-in-law,  he 
was  in  the  Boer  War,"  she  said  the  next  moment.  Meares 
said  nothing;  he  was  filling  his  pipe  and  kept  his  head 
down. 

She  went  on  briskly  with  her  story  after  that  interrup- 
tion, and  I  thought  nothing  of  it  at  the  time,  but  later  it 
came  to  me  that  she  had,  for  some  inexplicable  reason, 
been  afraid. 

Presently  we  were  offered  biscuits  and  the  choice  of 
cocoa  or  whiskey.  Meares  was  the  only  one  of  us  who 
took  whiskey — and  then  Mrs.  Meares  said  that  she  had  been 
"doing  all  the  talking"  and  suggested  that  Judith  and  I 
should  contribute  a  little  autobiography.  She  nailed  me 
by  way  of  making  a  beginning.  It  was  like  being  asked 
to  sing  or  recite  at  a  party. 

"Nothing  of  the  least  interest  has  ever  happened  to  me," 
I  protested,  and  looking  back,  now,  I  feel  that  the  state- 
ment was  particularly  well  justified  at  that  time. 

"Oh!  come  now,"  Mrs.  Meares  responded.  "I'm  sure 
you've  had  your  adventures." 

"Absolutely  none,"  I  insisted.  "Home,  school,  office,  and 
now  an  attempt  within  the  last  two  months  to  set  up  in 
private  practice;  that's  the  whole  of  my  adventure  up  to 
the  present  time." 


THE  TWO  AUSTRALIANS  197 

"People  alive?"  Meares  put  in  unexpectedly  in  his  deep, 
melancholy  voice. 

"My  father  died  years  ago,"  I  said,  "and  my  mother 
last  September  .  .  ." 

"Basil !  you  shouldn't  have  asked  that,"  Mrs.  Meares  put 
in  quickly,  and  then  she  turned  to  me  and  said,  "I  am  sorry, 
Mr.  Hornby;  but  of  course  we  couldn't  know,  could  we?" 

"Of  course  not,"  I  said,  and  hurried  on  to  cover  my  em- 
barrassment by  saying,  "Certainly  I  was  engaged  once;  if 
you  call  that  an  adventure." 

"Well!"  remarked  Mrs.  Meares  on  a  note  of  genuine 
surprise. 

"But  it  was  the  most  conventional  affair  you  ever  heard 
of,"  I  went  on.  I  had  no  intention  of  leaving  my  announce- 
ment unexplained.  "She  was  my  cousin,  and  my  uncle 
and  aunt  are  rather  well-off.  We  weren't  either  of  us  the 
least  in  love  with  one  another;  but  we  were  somehow  ex- 
pected to  get  engaged  and  so  we  did."  I  stopped  abruptly, 
with  a  sudden  twinge  of  regret.  I  remembered  that  scene 
on  the  Heath  when  I  had  proposed  to  Gladys,  and  the 
thought  of  her  came  back  to  me  as  the  memory  of  some- 
thing that  had  once  been  a  very  essential  part  of  my  life. 
I  had  undoubtedly  been  very  fond  of  her,  once. 

"And  who  broke  it  off?"  asked  Mrs.  Meares. 

"Oh!  well,  I  daresay  I  wasn't  altogether  satisfactory," 
I  said,  trying  to  cover  Gladys's  act  of  treason.  "No  pros- 
pects and  so  on,  you  understand.  She's  engaged  to  a  man 
called  Morrison  Blake,  now — perhaps  you've  heard  of  him?" 

"I  have.  He's  an  expert  in  antiques,"  Meares  put  iri 
solidly. 

"That's  the  chap,"  I  said  cheerfully. 

"And  you  weren't  heartbroken?"  Mrs.  Meares  asked, 
with  the  excellent  intention  of  reinstating  my  eligibility,  I 
suppose. 

"Oh!  good  Heavens,  no!"  I  said.  "I  admire  my  cousin 
very  much  but  .  .  .  but  nothing  more  than  that." 

Mrs.  Meares  nodded.  "Just  as  well  you  didn't  go  on  with 
it,"  she  said,  and  I  was  afraid  that  she  was  going  to  make 


198  HOUSE-MATES 

some  gauche  remark;  but  whether  because  she  noticed  my 
nervousness  or  realised  instinctively  the  necessity  for  finer 
tact,  she  abruptly  changed  the  subject  by  turning  to  Judith 
and  saying, 

"Well,  now,  really  it's  your  turn,  Miss  Carrington." 

Judith  leaned  a  little  forward  and  clasped  her  hands  to- 
gether. 

"I  think  my  story  is  rather  like  Mr.  Hornby's,"  she  said. 
"All — all — oh!  I  don't  know  how  to  say  it — all  inside,  if 
you  know  what  I  mean."  She  looked  at  me  despairingly 
for  help  and  I  got  in  front  of  Mrs.  Meares  by  saying, 

"That  night  of  the  Whiting  row  began  lots  of  things 
with  me."  I  looked  for  some  response  to  that,  but  found 
only  an  appearance  of  perplexity.  "I  met  Hill  that  night 
for  the  first  time,"  I  explained. 

"Meeting  Helen  made  a  tremendous  difference  to  me," 
Judith  said,  and  I  felt  as  if  I  had  been  snubbed. 

"Why?"   I   asked. 

She  recognised  the  note  of  antagonism  in  my  voice. 

"She  was  so  splendid,"  she  said  challenging  me. 

"But  you  don't  say  why,"  I  returned. 

"Don't  you  think  Helen  is  splendid  ?"  Judith  said,  turning 
to  Mrs.  Meares. 

"Well,  I  hardly  know  her,  you  see,"  Mrs.  Meares  said 
tactfully. 

"You  know  her  quite  as  well  as  Mr.  Hornby  does," 
Judith  returned  quietly. 

"I  don't  know  that  I've  expressed  any  opinion  one  way 
or  the  other,"  I  put  in. 

"But  you  don't  like  her,  do  you?"  Judith  asked. 

"Well,  she  doesn't  like  me,"  I  retorted. 

I  wish  Mrs.  Meares  had  not  cut  across  the  conversation 
at  that  point.  Judith  and  I  were  almost  quarrelling,  but  we 
were  really  speaking  to  one  another  for  the  first  time.  We 
had  both  admitted  so  certainly  that  the  animosity  of  Helen 
Binstead  was  an  obstacle,  and  I  was  hoping  to  hear  some 
suggestion  for  surmounting  it  when  Mrs.  Meares  discon- 
nected us  by  saying: 


THE  TWO  AUSTRALIANS  199 

"Well,  to  me  it  seems  an  adventure,  Miss  Carrington, 
that  you  should  be  living  in  a  house  like  this.  One  can 
see  you  weren't  brought  up  to  it,  if  you'll  excuse  my  say- 
ing so." 

"Yes,  oh !  yes,  that's  true ;  I  ran  away,"  Judith  said  smil- 
ing. "I  was  educated  by  two  aunts,  my  father's  sisters,  and 
we  lived  at  Cheltenham  and  went  to  Barmouth  every  Au- 
gust for  exactly  four  weeks.  It  was  at  Barmouth  that  I 
met  Helen." 

"Don't  your  aunts  know  where  you  are,  now?"  I  asked. 

She  looked  at  me,  rather  wistfully,  I  thought.  "Not 
actually,"  she  said.  "They  know  I'm  in  London  and  all 
right ;  but  they  don't  know  my  address.  I'm  so  afraid  .  .  . 
I  am  sorry  for  them  .  .  .  but  I  couldn't  go  back.  You  don't 
know  how  terrible  it  was  to  be  shut  in  like  that."  She 
paused  a  moment  and  then,  ostensibly  addressing  Mrs. 
Meares,  she  went  on,  "Do  you  think  I  ought  to  go  back  ?" 

"Why,  no!  of  course  not,"  Mrs.  Meares  replied  without 
a  moment's  hesitation.  "Why  should  you?" 

"It  must  have  hurt  them  dreadfully,"  Judith  said.  "Their 
letters  are  so  formal,  but  I  can  see  that  they  are — dis- 
tressed, very  distressed." 

"But  they'd  no  right  to  bottle  you  up  like  that,  now, 
had  they,  Miss  Carrington?"  asked  Mrs.  Meares. 

"I  don't  know,"  Judith  said.  "They  thought  they  were 
right." 

She  looked  so  little  like  an  insurgent.  She  had  the  ap- 
pearance of  being  so  calm  and,  as  Mrs.  Meares  had  put 
it — steady.  And  the  same  thought  must  have  been  in  that 
little  woman's  mind  at  the  same  moment,  for  she  avoided 
the  impossible  ethical  problem  that  had  been  set  us,  and 
said, 

"Well,  if  you  ran  away,  Miss  Carrington,  I'm  sure  you 
must  have  had  some  very  good  reason." 

Judith  shook  her  head.  "I'm  not  sure,"  she  said.  "I  was 
excited  and  silly."  And  then  she  closed  the  conversation 
by  saying  that  she  must  go. 

The  Meares  made  the  usual  expostulations,  but  she  slipped 


200  HOUSE-MATES 

out  of  the  room  with  a  little  smile,  while  they  were  still 
protesting. 

"She'd  get  her  own  way  with  whoever  it  was,"  Meares 
said  solemnly. 


I  hoped  that  entertainment  of  the  Meares  might  be  re- 
peated. I  had  spoken  to  Judith  for  the  first  time,  and  I 
was  not  dissatisfied  with  our  brief  interchange  of  remarks 
about  Helen  Binstead.  I  repeated  to  myself  Judith's  "But 
you  don't  like  her,  do  you  ?"  and  found  a  significance  in  the 
sentence  that  had  probably  never  been  intended.  I  de- 
luded myself  into  thinking  that  her  regret  (I  had  distinctly 
recognised  regret  in  her  voice)  was  due  to  the  fact,  so 
unduly  prominent  in  my  own  mind,  that  Miss  Binstead 
was  an  obstacle.  It  was  impossible  for  me  to  realise,  then, 
that  she  could  be  an  object  of  worship. 

My  depression  was  all  the  greater  for  that  imagined  en- 
couragement when  day  after  day  went  by  and  I  had  no 
further  sight  of  Judith,  save  the  Hrief  glimpses  of  her 
that  I  snatched  as  she  went  down  the  front  steps  with 
Helen  Binstead.  They  had  apparently  given  up  going  to 
Hill's  room  on  Sunday  mornings  (I  endured  Mrs.  Har- 
greave  with  growing  impatience  on  two  occasions),  and 
more  ominous  still,  they  refused  Mrs.  Meares's  second  invi- 
tation to  spend  an  evening  in  "good  company." 

"I  don't  know  if  you  would  care  to  come  all  the  same, 
Mr.  Hornby,"  Mrs.  Meares  said  to  me.  "Mr.  Hill  is  com- 
ing, and  he's  always  amusing,  isn't  he?" 

Of  course  I  had  to  pretend  with  redundant  assurances 
that  I  should,  in  any  case,  be  delighted  to  spend  an  evening 
with  her  and  her  husband. 

We  had  a  very  dull  evening,  but  I  should  have  been  dull 
anywhere  at  that  time.  Meares  and  Hill  talked  politics, 
discussing  the  critical  election  that  was  to  come  in  Janu- 
ary. Meares  was  a  staunch  conservative  and  was  not  to 
be  convinced  that  a  Liberal  government  under  the  leader- 


THE  TWO  AUSTRALIANS  201 

ship  of  Campbell  Bannerman  had  any  chance  of  success. 
I  had  never  taken  the  least  interest  in  politics,  but  I  was 
a  conservative  by  force  of  habit,  supported  Meares,  and 
lost  my  temper  with  Hill  for  being  so  cock-sure  that  the 
Liberals  would  come  in  with  a  thumping  majority.  I  had 
always  been  led  to  believe  that  a  strong  Radical  govern- 
ment meant  the  downfall  of  England. 

Hill  only  laughed  which  annoyed  me  still  more,  and  when 
we  left  the  room  together  he  seemed  to  have  forgotten  our 
disagreement. 

"Meares  said  anything  to  you,  yet,  about  his  business?" 
he  asked  as  we  were  parting  on  the  landing. 

"No,  he  has  never  mentioned  it.  Why  should  he?"  I 
said. 

Hill  did  not  answer  my  questions  directly.  "He  doesn't 
seem  to  be  doing  very  well  with  it,"  he  remarked,  hesitated, 
as  if  he  were  going  to  make  some  further  explanation,  and 
then  nodded  and  went  upstairs. 

I  remembered  that  little  colloquy  a  few  days  later.  I 
came  in  from  the  street  and  found  Meares  in  the  hall  with 
his  hat  and  overcoat  on. 

"Going  out?"  I  remarked  cheerfully,  and  left  the  front 
door  open. 

"No,  just  come  in,"  he  said,  and  I  wondered  what  he 
had  been  doing  in  the  hall  for  the  last  minute  or  two.  I 
had  not  seen  him  enter  the  house  as  I  came  up  Keppel 
Street,  and  "73"  was  about  half-way  down  from  Totten- 
ham Court  Road. 

"Miserable  weather,"  was  his  next  opening.  He  showed 
no  sort  of  inclination  to  go  on  upstairs. 

I  agreed  and  waited;  I  could  not  shut  my  door  in  his 
face,  and  at  last,  although  I  did  not  want  him,  I  asked 
him  to  come  in  and  have  tea. 

He  accepted  gloomily,  but  after  a  time  he  cheered  up 
and  began  to  talk  about  Australia.  He  was  not  an  articu- 
late creature,  but  he  interested  me  up  to  a  point,  and  I  was 
not,  after  all,  particularly  anxious  to  be  alone  with  my 
thoughts. 


202  HOUSE-MATES 

And  then  he  gradually  drifted  away  from  his  unilluminat- 
ing  disquisitions  on  Australian  scenery  and  people  into  a 
more  technical  and  far  more  graphic  account  of  the  coun- 
try's mineral  resources.  He  had  been  a  miner  all  his  life, 
he  said,  not  only  looking  for  gold,  but  also  working  for 
copper  and  tin  in  New  South  Wales  and  Queensland. 

"I'm  an  expert,  you  see,"  he  explained.  "I  was  offered 
a  job  to  go  out  and  report  on  a  property  only  a  few  days 
ago." 

In  my  innocence  I  thought  that  ought  to  have  cheered 
him  up,  and  I  asked  him  why  he  had  not  accepted  it. 

"I  may,  still,"  he  said.  "It's  hard  luck  on  me,  but  I  ex- 
pect it'll  come  to  that." 

I  suppose  I  looked  my  perplexity  for  he  threw  his  head 
back  with  the  nearest  approach  to  excitement  I  ever  saw 
him  exhibit,  and  said,  "A  man  doesn't  want  to  take  on  a 
job  of  that  sort,  when  he's  got  a  property  like  I've  got, 
spoiling  to  be  developed." 

"Oh!  yes,  I'd  forgotten,"  I  said.  "I  remember,  now, 
Hill  told  me  you  had  a  mine  of  your  own;  but  why  .  .  ." 
I  knew  even  less  of  mining  properties  than  I  did  of  politics. 

Meares  scratched  his  beard  and  looked  at  me  with  just 
a  shade  of  amusement  in  his  handsome  brown  eyes. 

"It's  not  so  easy  for  an  Australian  like  me  to  raise 
money  over  here,  Mr.  Hornby,"  he  said.  "You  see,  I 
haven't  got  the  gift  of  the  gab,  and  I'm  not  used  to  the  ways 
of  these  City  sharks."  He  paused,  shook  his  head  solemnly 
and  went  on,  "But  it  isn't  only  that,  in  this  case.  You  see 
where  it  is,  is  that  my  scheme  don't  interest  'em  overmuch. 
They're  all  on  the  gamble,  the  ones  I've  met,  anyway.  They 
want  to  float  a  company  and  sell  my  rights  to  the  share- 
holders at  a  five  hundred  per  cent  profit,  and  I'm  not  on 
for  that  kind  of  game." 

"I'm  afraid  I'm  very  ignorant  about  things  like  this," 
I  said.  "Do  explain  it  to  me."  I  was  really  interested,  now, 
not  so  much  in  the  man's  business  as  in  the  man  himself. 

"Well,  it's  like  this,  Mr.  Hornby,"  Meares  explained. 
"All  I  want  is  to  raise  ten  thousand  pounds  to  work  this 


THE  TWO  AUSTRALIANS  203 

mine.  It's  an  opencast,  alluvial  deposit,  you  know— -and 
there's  none  of  those  expenses  of  hydraulic  or  crushing  ma- 
chinery that  run  away  with  so  much  money  in  lode  min- 
ing. Well,  I  won't  bother  you  with  that,  the  point  is  that 
these  company  promoting  sharks  aren't  on  to  put  out 
money  at  a  modest  ten  per  cent,  which  is  all  I  care  to 
guarantee  out  of  my  property.  They  want  to  form  a 
syndicate,  buy  the  mine,  and  begin  working,  and  then  sell 
to  a  company." 

"And  you  won't  do  that?"  I  encouraged  him. 

"It  wouldn't  be  straight  dealing,  Mr.  Hornby,  not  in  my 
opinion,"  Meares  said  quietly.  "I  don't  pretend  that  we 
could  show  a  decent  profit  on  a  capital  of  a  couple  hun- 
dred thousand.  I  know  that  sort  of  thing's  done  every  day ; 
but  it  isn't  my  line." 

"Couldn't  you  find  a  man  to  provide  the  money  as  an 
investment?"  I  asked. 

"They  want  finding,  Mr.  Hornby,"  Meares  said,  sadly. 
"I  haven't  got  the  right  kind  of  introductions  for  that  job." 

I  wanted  to  help  him.  I  was  entirely  convinced  of  his 
sincerity.  But  I  only  knew  one  person  in  the  world  who 
had  ten  thousand  pounds  to  invest,  and  even  if  I  had  been 
on  speaking  terms  with  my  uncle,  I  should  have  hesitated 
to  approach  him  on  such  an  errand,  however  sure  I  might 
have  been  of  Meares's  good  faith. 

I  was  still  puzzling  over  the  problem,  when  some  one 
tapped  at  the  door  and  Mrs.  Meares  looked  in. 

"Oh!  so  you're  there,  are  you?"  she  said,  playfully  re- 
proving her  husband.  "I  thought  I  saw  you  coming  up 
the  street,  and  when  you  didn't  come  up,  I  supposed  I  must 
have  been  mistaken.  And  there  have  I  been  keepin'  your  tea 
waiting  for  over  an  hour." 

"I  met  Mr.  Hornby  in  the  hall,"  Meares  explained. 

"Oh !  dear,  now  I  hope  he  hasn't  been  bothering  you  by 
talking  about  his  business,  Mr.  Hornby,"  Mrs.  Meares  ran 
on,  addressing  me. 

"I've  been  tremendously  interested,"  I  protested. 


204  HOUSE-MATES 

"Well,  there's  one  thing  he's  never  told  you  about  it, 
I'm  sure,"  Mrs.  Meares  said. 

Meares  rose  to  his  feet  with  a  slightly  impatient  frown. 
"Come  now,  Minnie,"  he  expostulated. 

"I  thought  not,"  she  exclaimed  triumphantly.  "Well, 
then,  I'll  tell  you  the  truth  about  it,  Mr.  Hornby,  and  it's 
this — he's  just  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  child  over  his 
old  mine.  He  could  sell  his  option  to-morrow,  if  he  liked; 
but  no,  he  wants  to  work  it  himself  and  nothing  else'll  please 
him.  Like  a  child  with  a  toy,  I  tell  him." 

Meares  was  smiling  apologetically. 

"Oh !  come  now,  Minnie,"  he  repeated. 

She  tossed  her  head  with  a  pretence  of  despair  as  she 
followed  him  out  of  the  room. 

I  had  quite  a  different  feeling  for  the  Meares  after  that 
incident.  I  could  appreciate  his  personal  interest  in  the 
mine,  and  I  saw  how  that  almost  childish  desire  to  own 
a  mine  and  run  it  himself  had  lain  underneath  his  bitter- 
ness against  the  "sharks/5  who  only  wanted  to  exploit  the 
property  and  cared  nothing  what  became  of  it  after  they 
had  secured  their  profit.  For  him,  the  word  "shark"  had, 
I  think,  far  more  meaning  than  we  commonly  attach  to  it. 
His  wife  had  told  us  the  story  of  a  horrible  termination 
to  a  boat  accident  just  outside  Sydney  harbour,  and  to  both 
of  them  the  shark  was  the  personification  of  all  that  is 
greedy,  brutal,  inhuman.  It  was  very  evident  that  Meares 
had  no  intention  of  having  his  beloved  mine  bolted  whole  by 
one  of  that  species. 

And  I  admired,  also,  her  tenderness  for  what  some  women 
in  her  position  would  have  regarded  as  an  almost  criminal 
weakness.  She  was  not  ready  to  sacrifice  him  for  the 
sake  of  a  competence,  and  I  liked  her  for  that.  She  might 
make  a  joke  of  his  foible,  but  I  was  sure  that  they  were 
devoted  to  one  another. 


THE  TWO  AUSTRALIANS  205 


VI 

I  gave  Hill  my  impressions  the  next  evening.  He  came 
in  about  half-past  nine,  and  I  waylaid  him  in  the  hall,  and 
brought  him  into  my  room. 

He  listened  attentively  to  all  I  had  to  say,  and  then  asked, 

"Did  he  invite  you  to  put  any  money  in  his  mine?" 

"Lord  no !  Never  suggested  it,"  I  said.  "You  don't  sup- 
pose I've  got  ten  thousand  pounds  to  invest,  do  you?" 

"No,  I  don't,"  Hill  said;  "but  you  might  have  five  hun- 
dred." 

"Not  even  that,"  I  admitted.  "But  if  I  had,  what  would 
be  the  good  of  it?" 

"I  think  Meares  has  some  idea  of  making  up  a  syndicate 
of  small  investors,"  Hill  said. 

I  pondered  that  for  a  moment,  and  then  asked  Hill  if 
he  thought  that  I  should  not  be  well-advised  to  trust  Meares 
with,  say,  two  hundred  and  fifty. 

He  looked,  I  fancied,  rather  uncomfortable.  "How  can 
I  say?"  he  asked. 

"You  seemed  inclined  to  warn  me  the  other  night,"  I 
reminded  him. 

"The  point,"  Hill  said,  suddenly  warming  to  the  discus- 
sion, "is  whether  this  property  of  his  is  any  good.  He 
believes  it  is,  I  don't  doubt  that,  but  he  may  be  quite  mis- 
taken. .  .  .  I've  promised  him  a  little,  myself,  but  .  .  . 
well,  I'm  quite  prepared  never  to  see  it  again.  And  I  ad- 
vise you  to  go  in  in  the  same  spirit,  if  you  do  go  in.  There's 
something  about  them  makes  me  doubtful."  He  paused  and 
looked  at  me  with  a  frown.  "You  believe  in  them?"  he 
asked. 

"I  like  them,"  I  returned. 

"So  do  I,"  Hill  said. 

I  meant  to  have  told  him,  then,  about  Mrs.  Meares's  con- 
fusion after  using  the  word  "hinterland,"  but  something 
put  it  out  of  my  head  at  the  moment,  and  I  did  not  think 
of  it  again  until  the  mystery  had  been  explained  by  an 


206  HOUSE-MATES 

agency  that  we  certainly  had  never  anticipated.  Indeed, 
I  temporarily  forgot  the  Meares's  existence  when  that  period 
of  six  weeks,  I  indicated,  was  so  wonderfully  ended  the 
next  day. 


X 

JUDITH 


I  HAVE  never  pretended  that  I  was  a  bold  lover.  I  do 
not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  admire  that  type  as  I  have 
observed  it  in  my  own  experience.  In  fiction  your  bold 
lover  is  an  unconvincing  survival  of  such  romantics  as 
young  Lochinvar ;  but  in  life  I  have  only  found  him  among 
the  men  with  marked  polygamistic  tendencies — and  I  am  a 
monogamist  by  instinct. 

I  can  smile  at  myself,  now,  for  boasting  that  I  eventually 
met  Judith  half-way,  but  at  the  time  I  had  to  make  a  great 
effort  to  do  a  thing  which  seems  ridiculously  easy  when 
I  come  to  put  it  down. 

I  saw  Judith  and  Miss  Binstead  go  out  together  about 
eleven  o'clock,  on  the  morning  after  my  talk  with  Meares. 
They  turned  to  the  right,  as  they  nearly  always  did,  now, 
and  I  only  just  caught  sight  of  Judith's  profile  as  she  went 
down  the  steps. 

I  was  a  little  more  discouraged  than  usual  by  their  care- 
ful avoidance  of  me,  and  I  had  great  difficulty,  afterwards, 
in  concentrating  my  attention  on  the  competition  drawing 
I  was  engaged  upon.  Everything,  even  my  chances  of 
winning  that  competition,  appeared  so  absolutely  hopeless. 

And  then  a  little  before  twelve  Judith  came  back  alone; 
and  she  came  past  my  window.  I  was  staring  moodily  out 
at  the  dull,  grey  street,  but  when  I  saw  her  it  was  as  if  a 
curtain  had  been  lifted.  The  aspect  of  everything  was 
changed.  The  familiar  houses  opposite,  the  lamp-post  that 

207! 


208  HOUSE-MATES 

came  into  my  view  on  the  left,  the  dark,  greasy  surface 
of  the  asphalt  roadway,  fell  suddenly  into  a  pleasing 
composition ;  were  sharpened  up  into  an  effective  and  beau- 
tiful background  for  the  central  figure  of  my  picture. 

And  she  looked  up  at  me  as  she  passed,  not  with  a  smile, 
but  with  a  steady,  rather  anxious  glance  that  held,  I  thought, 
a  hint  of  pleading. 

I  felt  that  her  expression  was  an  invitation,  and  yet  I 
hesitated  to  respond.  Every  detail  of  my  first  miserable 
mistake  came  up  before  me,  recent  and  vivid  as  a  bitter 
dream.  And  if  I  met  her  in  the  hall,  now,  would  she  not 
find  new  cause  to  despise  me?  This  might  be  a  trap  de- 
liberately set  by  my  enemy,  Helen  Binstead.  I  could  imagine 
her  dull,  threatening  voice  saying,  "He's  only  waiting  for  a 
chance  to  find  you  alone.  Try  it,  dear.  Give  him  the  least 
encouragement  and  see  if  he  won't  insult  you  again." 

I  heard  the  click  of  the  latch-key  in  the  front  door,  but 
it  was  my  thought  of  Helen  Binstead  rather  than  the  des- 
perate clutching  at  a  late  opportunity  that  sent  me  across 
the  room,  with  my  pencil  still  in  my  hand.  I  was  deter- 
mined to  lay  the  ghost  of  that  old  suspicion  once  and  for 
all;  to  vindicate  myself  against  the  sinister  suggestions  of 
my  enemy. 

Even  then  I  hesitated  with  my  hand  on  the  door,  and 
when  I  opened  it,  my  despairing  courage  had  evaporated 
and  I  stood  there,  shamefaced  and  timid. 

Judith  was  standing  by  the  hall  table,  and  I  was  in- 
stantly conscious  of  her  again  as  the  central  figure  of  a 
picture.  For  the  first  time  the  fading  haze  of  the  blue 
that  fell  on  the  yellow  varnished  paper  near  the  fan-light 
appeared  to  me  as  being  quite  a  beautiful  effect. 

She  looked  at  me  bravely  and  yet,  as  it  were,  a  little 
breathlessly. 

"May  I  come  in  for  a  minute?"  she  asked;  and  the  con- 
ventional disguise  that  I  hastily  assumed  in  moments  of 
timidity  instantly  smothered  me. 

"Oh !  yes,  please  do !"  I  said. 

She  came  in  and  stood  by  the  table,  with  her  back  to 


JUDITH  209 

the  door  that  I  had,  almost  ostentatiously,  left  open.  And 
now  I  further  underlined  my  apology  for  that  one  gross 
boldness  of  mine  by  standing  on  the  hearthrug,  so  that  the 
table  was  between  us  and  the  way  of  escape  clear  behind 
her.  If  this  were,  indeed,  a  trap  of  Miss  Binstead's,  she 
should  get  no  satisfaction  out  of  it. 

I  could  think  of  nothing  to  say.  Her  request  to  come 
into  my  room  had  startled  me,  and  put  our  interview  on 
some  kind  of  formal  footing.  I  was  desperately  consider- 
ing topics  for  conversation,  but  all  the  polite  openings 
seemed  foolishly  out  of  place.  The  weather,  the  theatre, 
Hill,  the  Meares,  the  approach  of  Christmas  were  all  so 
terrifyingly  vacuous. 

And  Judith  was  looking  down  at  her  hands  resting  on 
the  tablecloth,  as  if  she,  too,  were  quite  unable  to  venture 
on  orthodox  politeness. 

I  was  on  the  verge  of  asking  her  if  she  were  going  away 
for  Christmas  when  she  spoke.  She  did  not  look  up,  and 
her  voice  was  so  low  that  I  hardly  heard  her. 

"I  wanted  to  explain,"  she  said. 

I  must  have  realised,  then,  that  this  was  the  opening 
for  which  I  had  been  waiting,  and  that  if  I  were  ever  to 
escape  from  the  awful  conventional  reserve  which  hid  me 
from  her,  I  must  seize  my  opportunity. 

"There's  nothing  for  you  to  explain/'  I  said. 

She  looked  up  with  a  faint  smile  as  if  I  had  suddenly 
relieved  her  embarrassment. 

"Oh!  that!"  she  said,  with  a  touch  of  contempt 

"Yes,  but  it  was  just  that,"  I  protested. 

"Was  it?"  she  asked. 

"Well,  what  else  could  it  have  been?" 

She  shook  her  head  and  looked  down  again. 

"I  mean  that  that  was  what  put  Miss  Binstead  so  much 
against  me,  in  the  first  place,"  I  went  on.  "I  can't  blame 
her,  in  a  way.  But  if  you  knew  how  I  ...  I've  kicked 
myself  since  .  .  ," 

"Of  course,  I  know,"  she  said.     "I  knew  at  once." 


210  HOUSE-MATES 

"Perhaps  you  did,"  I  said.  "But  she  has  used  it  against 
me.  I'm  sure  she  has." 

"Only  quite  at  first,"  Judith  said. 

"But  why?  .  .  .  Lately?"   I  asked.     "Well,  you  never 
come  down  to  Hill's  room  on  Sunday  mornings,  now,  for 
one  thing." 
"  "That  was  what  I  wanted  to  explain,"  she  said. 

It  seemed  as  if  we  had  shared  an  understanding  for 
months  and  were  at  last  able  to  meet  and  explain  ourselves. 
After  that  first  terrible  hesitation  we  had  leaped  instantly 
into  an  immense  confidence.  We  were  talking  with  the 
easy  elisions  that  indicate  a  tried  intimacy.  We  had  amaz- 
ingly and  instantly  assumed  that  we  had  wanted  to  meet 
and  had  been  kept  apart. 

"I  wish  you  could,"  I  said. 

"Only  it's  so  difficult — here,"  she  almost  whispered,  and 
glanced  quickly  at  my  open  door. 

"Perhaps  if  we  went  for  a  walk,"  I  suggested. 

She  seemed  to  weigh  that  proposition  very  doubtfully 
before  she  answered,  and  I  waited,  already  thrilled  by  the 
sheer  delight  of  anticipation. 

"Where  could  we  go  ?"  she  asked  at  last. 

"Hampstead!    The  Heath,  you  know!"  I  replied. 

"Oh!  yes,"  she  agreed  eagerly.  "I  have  never  been  to 
Hampstead  Heath." 

ii 

We  took  the  yellow  buss  from  Tottenham  Court  Road 
to  Pond  Street,  and  I  believe  that  during  the  slow  ride  our 
conversation  dealt  exclusively  with  means  of  transport. 
This  was  the  route  with  which  I  was  most  familiar,  and 
I  found  matter  for  all  kinds  of  chatter  concerning  it.  The 
various  destinations  of  these  outwardly  similar  mustard 
coloured  busses  figured  quite  entertainingly  as  a  beginning. 
I  hinted  at  the  mysterious  qualities  of  such  unexplored 
places  as  "The  Brecknock"  and  "Gospel  Oak."  I  became 
informative  about  the  means  of  distinguishing  one  "Cam- 


JUDITH 

den  Town"  bus  from  another  and  pointed  out  the  plates 
with  initials  in  the  little  forward  windows  below  the 
driver's  seat.  "H  &  V"  was  ours.  "There's  one  coming, 
now,"  I  explained,  "Hampstead  and  Victoria,  and  that  one, 
'K  T  &  V,'  is  Kentish  Town  and  Victoria.  They  all  go 
to  Victoria,  except  one,  that's  'A  T  &  P,'  Adelaide  Tavern 
and  Pimlico." 

That  topic  went  very  well  for  a  time,  and  then  we  dis- 
cussed the  future  of  the  motor  omnibus.  I  had  actually 
seen  one,  not  running,  it  is  true,  but  looking  very  impos- 
ing laid  up  against  the  curb  at  Hyde  Park  Corner  in  a 
backwater  near  the  Triumphal  Arch,  waiting  for  something 
to  take  it  home.  We  were  not  optimistic  about  the  future 
of  motor  buses. 

My  third  string,  the  new  tube  that  was  building  from 
Charing  Cross  to  Golders  Green — a  place  that  needed  ex- 
plaining to  Judith — completed  the  journey  for  us,  and 
after  that  I  had  to  play  cicerone  as  we  explored  the  Heath. — 
We  went  up  the  Esplanade  by  the  ponds  and  then  along 
the  cycle  track  over  the  bridge,  cutting  across  at  the  back 
of  the  untidy  Vale  of  Health  into  the  Spaniards  Road. 

And  always  we  talked  superficialities;  postponing  that 
promised  "explanation,"  as  if  it  were  something  that  we 
were  afraid  to  approach. 

We  sat  down,  finally,  on  that  comparatively  retired 
bench  under  the  firs,  looking  out  over  the  fall  in  the  ground 
towards  the  Heath  Extension  and  what  was  presently  to 
be  the  new  Garden  Suburb. 

It  was  a  dull,  threatening  day,  muggy  and  still,  and  we 
had  the  place  to  ourselves. 

I  had  dropped  my  stream  of  chatter,  and  although  a 
very  obvious  silence  fell  upon  us  after  we  sat  down,  I 
made  no  attempt  to  break  it.  I  was  content  to  sit  there 
for  a  time  and  then  return  with  Judith  to  Keppel  Street. 
I  had  been  forgiven ;  I  had,  indeed,  been  granted  a  wonder- 
ful mark  of  favour ;  and  all  I  desired  at  the  moment  was 
to  prove  that  I  had  no  intention  of  encroaching  upon  the 
privileges  I  had  been  offered.  I  had  temporarily  lost  all 


HOUSE-MATES 

my  jealousy  of  Helen  Binstead.  I  believed  that  she  was 
no  longer  an  obstacle. 

Judith's  first  words  brought  me  back  to  realities  with 
an  unpleasant  jerk. 

"Of  course,  you  don't  understand  Helen  a  bit,"  she  re- 
marked thoughtfully. 

The  reaction  jolted  me  out  of  my  pose  of  demure  hu- 
mility. 

"Oh!  bother  Helen!"  I  said. 

"Aren't  you  going  to  let  me  explain?"  she  asked,  staring 
out  over  the  path-threaded  maze  of  gorse  and  furze  below 
us.  In  any  other  place  we  should  surely  have  found  some 
colour  in  the  prospect,  but  here  the  whole  landscape  was 
done  in  greys,  like  a  very  faintly  warmed  study  in  lamp- 
black. 

"Is  it  all  about  Miss  Binstead?"  I  commented,  rather 
bitterly. 

"Why  do  you  dislike  her  so  much?"  Judith  asked.  "I 
want  to  know." 

"I  suppose  it's  because  she  dislikes  me  so  much,"  I  said. 
"She  always  has.  Don't  you  remember  how  she  went  for 
me  that  first  Sunday  up  in  Hill's  room?" 

"It's  all  so  silly,"  Judith  said  gravely. 

"I  dare-say,"  was  my  moody  response. 

"And  you  can't  give  any  other  reason  for  disliking 
her?" 

"I'll  give  you  a  reason  if  you  can  explain  her  aversion 
to  me,"  I  hazarded. 

A  just  perceptible  warmth  crept  into  her  face;  it  was 
as  if  she  faced  and  reflected  the  pink  stain  of  sunset. 

"Of  course,  she's  just  as  silly,"  she  said. 

"But  why?"  I  insisted.  I  saw  that  I  could  hold  a  splen- 
did advantage  by  pressing  that  question. 

She  very  slightly  shrugged  her  shoulders  and  then  be- 
gan to  take  off  her  little  brown  kid  gloves — a  purely  nervous 
action  that  satisfied  her  craving  for  some  meticulous  occu- 
pation. She  scrupulously  tweaked  the  fingers  of  the  left 
hand  in  turn  until  the  glove  slid  away,  then  she  laid  it  in 


JUDITH  213 

her  lap  and  repeated  the  operation  with  the  other  hand. 

"She's  jealous  of  you,"  she  said  gravely,  bending  over 
her  intriguing  operation.  "It  sounds  ridiculous,  I  know ;  but 
then  she  and  I  aren't  friends  in  quite  the  ordinary  way. 
It's  something  bigger  than  that.  You  see,  she  came  into  my 
life  like — oh !  like  the  sun  coming  out  of  a  fog.  You  can't 
guess  what  life  with  my  aunts  was  like.  All  the  restraints 
.  .  .  about  the  way  one  Sat  and  Looked  and  Walked! 
And  I  felt  it  more  at  Barmouth  than  at  home,  because 
there  were  other  people  there  who  were  just  jolly  and 
ordinary.  In  Cheltenham  we  only  knew  the  people  who 
thought  exactly  as  my  aunts  did  about  everything." 

She  had  forgotten  her  gloves  for  a  moment,  and  she 
looked  at  me  for  the  first  time  since  we  had  sat  down,  as 
she  went  on  with  a  little  perplexed  frown, 

"I  suppose  it's  hardly  possible  for  you  to  realise  the 
sort  of  life  I  led  there  ?" 

"Oh!  I  can,"  I  said,  with  conviction.  "You  see,  my 
father  was  in  the  Qiurch,  and  my  mother  was  very  pious 
...  in  that  particular  way." 

She  shook  her  head.  "But  it  must  have  been  quite, 
quite  different  for  you,"  she  returned.  "You  went  to  school 
and  to  your  office.  You  could  get  away,  sometimes.  I 
couldn't — never  for  a  moment." 

Mrs.  Meares's  comment  occurred  to  me.  "And  yet  you 
don't  look  like  a  rebel,"  I  said. 

She  smiled.    "What  does  a  rebel  look  like?"  she  asked. 

"Well,  more  impetuous,"  I  suggested. 

"But  I'm  a  very  serious  rebel,"  she  said,  and  her  earnest 
grey  eyes  were  full  of  light  and  colour.  "That's  the  worst 
kind,  isn't  it?"  she  added,  still  smiling. 

I  had  no  idea.  I  was  thinking  that  her  face  was  so 
absolutely  "right."  I  cannot  find  another  word.  It  is  the 
word  that  we  always  used  in  the  office  as  the  conclusive 
mark  of  approval.  When  a  thing  was  "right"  it  was 
beyond  criticism.  And  from  the  first  moment  I  had  seen 
Judith,  that  was  the  only  satisfying  term  I  had  found  for 
her. 


214  HOUSE-MATES 

I  suppose  she  guessed  something  of  what  was  in  my 
mind,  for  she  looked  away  and  returned  to  the  business 
of  her  gloves.  I  watched  her  hands  with  the  same  sense 
of  satisfaction  that  I  had  had  in  the  contemplation  of  her 
eyes.  Her  hands  were  "right,"  too;  not  very  small,  and 
certainly  not  dimpled,  but  white  and  firm  and  steady. 

"If  I  weren't  a  rebel,  I  shouldn't  be  here,"  she  remarked 
after  a  pause. 

I  misunderstood  that.  "But  I'm  not  blaming  you,"  I 
began. 

"I  mean  here,  now,  on  this  bench,  this  morning,"  she 
interrupted  me,  and  patted  the  bench  as  if  to  make  her 
ultimate  meaning  quite  plain  to  my  dull  intelligence. 

"Do  you  mean  that  you've  rebelled  against  Miss  Bin- 
stead,  too  ?"  I  asked  too  eagerly. 

"Oh!  not  like  that,"  she  said  impatiently. 

I  frowned  at  the  furze  bushes  like  a  snubbed  school- 
boy. 

"Can't  you  understand  how  fond  I  am  of  Helen?"  she 
asked. 

"No!"  I  said  sulkily;  and  in  my  thought  I  framed  all 
my  indictment  of  Miss  Binstead's  character  and  appear- 
ance. 

Judith  sighed.  "Then  we  might  just  as  well  go  home," 
she  said,  and  began  to  put  on  her  gloves. 

I  gave  way  at  once.  My  fear  of  losing  her  far  out- 
weighed my  inclination  to  make  a  martyr  of  myself  by 
sulking. 

"You  said  that  you'd  explain,"  I  said,  "and  you  haven't. 
You  might  at  all  events  give  me  the  chance  of  understand- 
ing." 

"I  can't  explain  that"  she  returned.  "One  isn't  fond  of 
a  person  because  they're — well,  good-looking  or  clever — at 
least  sometimes  one  is,  perhaps,  but  there  are  other  reasons 
.  .  .  reasons  you  can't  quite  understand  yourself." 

I  accepted  the  evasion  with  a  passing  wonder  if  it 
were  possible  that  Miss  Binsfead  looked  "right"  to  Judith. 
"What  was  it  about  then,  your  explanation  ?"  I  asked. 


JUDITH 


215 


"I  want  you  and  Helen  to  try  being  nice  to  each  other," 
she  said. 

"Did  she  know  that  you  were  going  to  speak  to  me?" 
I  asked. 

"Yes !  We  had  a  sort  of  quarrel  about  it  this  morning," 
Judith  said  and  came  at  last,  I  think,  to  the  real  essential 
of  her  long  deferred  explanation.  "You  see,"  she  went 
on,  "I'm  not  ...  I  don't  want  to  exchange  one  sort  of 
slavery  for  another.  I  didn't  run  away  for  that.  And  I 
can't  allow  even  Helen  to  dictate  to  me  about  who  I'm  to 
know."  She  paused  and  faced  me  suddenly  as  if  she  meant 
to  anticipate  my  too  hopeful  inference. 

"It's  not  particularly  because  it's  you,"  she  said.  "It 
might  be  anybody." 

"I  quite  understand  that,"  I  said  solemnly.  "But  even 
if  I  were  willing  to  be  'nice'  to  Miss  Binstead,  would 
she  .  .  .?" 

"She'll  have  to,"  Judith  said,  and  gave  me  a  satisfy- 
ing glimpse  of  the  different  methods  her  diplomacy  was 
taking. 

"Well,  I'll  certainly  try,"  I  agreed. 

That  compact  seemed  to  terminate  a  period  of  confidence. 
Behind  all  Judith's  girlishness  and  the  queer  timidities  that 
were  the  result  of  her  five  years  in  Cheltenham,  she  showed, 
even  in  those  days,  the  strong,  firm  mould  of  her  own 
natural  character.  And  that  steadiness  which  I  instinc- 
tively worshipped  in  her  now  put  and  held  me  at  the  level 
)f  a  friend.  Her  manner  gave  me  clearly  to  understand 
lat  our  acquaintance  would,  in  future,  go  in  the  key  of 
ler  acquaintance  with  Hill  or  Herz  or  Mrs.  Meares.  I 
lad  been  peculiarly  favoured  in  as  much  as  she  had  made 
:his  deliberate  approach  in  face  of  Helen's  violent  dis- 
ipproval,  but  now  that  I  had  been  given  to  understand 
one  drastic  sentence  that  it  was  not  because  it  was  me, 
that  it  might  have  been  anybody,  she  could  feel  at  ease 
again. 

We  talked  of  the  Heath  for  a  minute  or  two  and  then  the 
rain  that  had  been  threatening  so  long  materialised  in  a 


216  HOUSE-MATES 

misty  drizzle  and  we  made  our  way  back  by  the  White- 
stone  Pond  into  Heath  Street  and  had  lunch  together  at 
the  Express  Dairy. 

I  looked  up  at  Ken  Lodge  as  we  passed,  but  I  saw  no 
one  at  the  windows,  and  I  did  not  say  anything  to  Judith 
of  my  association  with  the  place. 

After  lunch  we  walked  back  despite  the  drizzle,  down 
Rosslyn  Hill  and  Haverstock  Hill  to  the  corner  of  Adelaide 
Road.  Our  journey  ended  as  it  had  begun  with  a  discus- 
sion of  London's  communications.  The  hoarding  at  the 
corner  of  Adelaide  Road  marked,  a  policeman  told  us,  the 
site  of  one  of  the  borings  for  the  new  Tube  Railway;  and 
as  I  had  recently  read  an  article  in  The  Builder  dealing 
with  the  method  of  driving  the  tubes,  I  expounded  the 
theory  to  Judith.  She  appeared  to  listen  with  a  highly 
intelligent  interest,  but  some  corner  of  her  mind  must 
have  been  engaged  in  debating  her  own  problems,  for  as 
we  turned  into  Keppel  Street,  she  stopped  me  in  the  middle 
of  a  sentence  and  said  without  the  least  relevance: 

"Will  you  ask  us  to  come  and  have  tea  with  you  on 
Friday?  Helen  and  me  and,  perhaps,  Mrs.  Hargreave  or 
the  Meares?" 

"Better  not  Mrs.  Hargreave  or  the  Meares,"  I  said.  "If 
there  is  to  be  any  chance  of  a  better  understanding  between 
Miss  Binstead  and  me,  we  are  more  likely  to  get  to  it 
if  we  are  alone." 

"Perhaps  you're  right,"  she  agreed,  and  then  as  we 
reached  the  door  of  "73"  she  looked  up  at  me  with  a 
friendly  smile  and  said,  "You're  very  quick  at  taking 
things  in." 

That  was  the  only  praise  I  had  had  from  her,  but  I 
found  it  very  stimulating.  Something  in  her  voice  and 
smile  had  definitely  approved  me  and  I  was  as  pleased  as 
a  child  that  has  been  praised  by  its  mother. 

"I'll  send  a  note  up  by  the  maid,"  I  said  as  we  parted 
in  the  hall. 


JUDITH  217 


in 

Helen  Binstead  surprised  me  considerably  at  that  little 
entertainment  of  mine.  I  had  not  realised  that  I  had  previ- 
ously seen  her  always  under  the  influence  of  a  particular 
mood ;  and  I  had  allowed  nothing  for  her  ability  as  an  act- 
ress. I  had  anticipated  a  gloomy,  resentful  attitude,  a 
grudging  admission  that  she  and  I  were  temporarily  com- 
pelled by  circumstances  to  tolerate  one  another's  unpleasant 
company;  and  I  was  quite  unprepared  for  her  greeting. 

She  came  into  the  room  with  her  head  up,  and  a  general 
appearance  of  being  willing  to  make  amends,  that  com- 
pletely deceived  me. 

"Judith  has  decided  that  you  and -I  are  to  be  friends, 
Mr.  Hornby,"  she  said,  holding  out  her  hand. 

"I  don't  know  why  we  shouldn't  be,"  I  replied  and  shook 
hands  with  her  willingly  enough. 

I  was  so  relieved  that  I  instantly  forgot  how  much  I 
disliked  her.  I  had  foreseen  so  many  difficulties,  and  had 
wondered  if  I  could  bring  myself  to  pretend  friendliness 
for  her  in  the  face  of  the  snubbing  I  had  thought  was  cer- 
tainly in  store  for  me.  And  now  that  I  found  her  pre- 
pared to  meet  me  half-way,  I  rated  myself  as  having  been 
suspicious  and  evil-minded. 

"I'm  sure  it  was  all  a  mistake,"  she  said. 

I  did  not  defend  myself.  "Quite  a  natural  mistake  on 
your  part,"  I  returned. 

I  felt  a  sudden  glow  of  liking  for  her;  and  found  for 
the  first  time  that  I  might  be  able  to  understand  her.  Until 
now  a  possible  misconstruction  of  her  every  action  had 
leaped  to  my  mind  whenever  I  thought  of  her,  and  no 
sympathy  had  been  possible;  but  the  curious  feeling  of 
warmth  that  came  with  the  relief  of  my  reaction  brought 
me  a  consciousness  of  release.  I  was  glad  that  I  had  been 
wrong. 

I   have  often  thanked   Heaven   since  then   for  my 
genuousness   on   that  occasion.      I   could   never   have   as- 


218  HOUSE-MATES 

sumed  that  air  of  friendliness  which  now  was  the  natural 
expression  of  my  feeling,  and  the  only  weapon  that  I  could 
have  effectively  used  to  defeat  Helen's  elaborate  scheme 
of  defence  for  the  precious  thing  she  would  not  share  with 
me  or  with  any  one.  Judith  knew  that  I  was  honest  in  my 
attempt  at  reciprocity,  and  it  mattered  nothing  that  Helen 
still  believed  me  a  fraud.  She  was  as  prejudiced  as  I  had 
been,  and  she  could  find  no  excuse  for  me  and  no  sign 
of  any  virtue.  Hate  is  always  blind;  often  to  its  own 
destruction. 

But  certainly  she  assumed  an  admirable  air  of  letting 
bygones  be  bygones.  And  if  I  noticed,  now  and  again, 
something  a  little  theatrical,  a  little  overdone  in  her  protes- 
tations, I  attributed  it  to  self-consciousness.  She  must,  I 
thought,  be  feeling,  as  I  was,  ashamed  of  her  past  sus- 
picions. 

Over  the  tea-table  we  found  a  tolerable  subject  in  the 
discussion  of  the  theatre.  I  was  a  neophyte,  and  she  had 
a  lot  of  information  concerning  the  ways  of  stage  life.  I 
listened  with  real  interest,  and  Judith  was  content  to  re- 
main in  the  background. 

Her  attitude,  indeed,  was  the  only  thing  that  puzzled  me. 
I  thought  she  would  be  delighted  at  the  wonderful  con- 
ciliation she  had  effected,  but  she  seemed,  I  fancied,  anxious 
and  worried,  and  strangest  of  all,  for  her,  a  trifle  restless. 
And  it  was  she  who  broke  up  the  party  much  earlier  than 
I  judged  to  be  necessary. 

IV 

For  three  or  four  weeks  after  my  tea-party,  the  little 
community  of  73  Keppel  Street  appeared  to  have  achieved 
a  perfectly  happy  relation  in  its  social  intercourse.  We 
abandoned  Hill's  room  as  a  Sunday  morning  meeting  place, 
and  every  one  came  downstairs  to  my  more  spacious  and 
convenient  apartment.  I  remember  that  on  one  Sunday — a 
week  before  Christmas — Christmas  day  fell  on  a  Monday 


JUDITH  219 

that  year — we  had  a  full  assembly  of  all  the  lodgers,  with 
the  one  exception  of  Miss  Whiting. 

She  had  not  been  excluded  deliberately.  Mrs.  Hargreave 
had  once  definitely  invited  her  to  join  us,  but  the  invitation 
had  been  firmly  refused.  I  believe,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
that  Miss  Whiting  was  in  funds  that  winter.  She  was 
often  away  from  the  house  for  a  week  or  more  at  a  time, 
and  when  she  stayed  there  her  conduct  was  irreproachable. 
When  she  went  out  in  the  evening  she  was  home  soon 
after  eleven  o'clock,  and  always  alone.  Mrs.  Hargreave 
explained  the  refusal  to  join  our  community  on  Sunday 
mornings,  by  attributing  it  to  a  fear  of  our  attitude. 

"She  can't  trust  you  to  treat  her  as  a  human  being," 
Mrs.  Hargreave  said. 

Perhaps  she  was  right  in  drawing  that  inference,  but 
I  think  Miss  Whiting  had  other  reasons  for  declining 
to  meet  us  on  terms  of  friendship. 

I  look  back  on  that  quiet  period,  now,  with  some  regret 
and  a  little  wonder.  I  feel  regret  because  it  seems  to  me 
that  despite  the  innate  tendencies  which  were  presently 
to  destroy  us,  we  really  achieved  a  happy  human  relation 
to  each  other.  My  wonder  is  due  to  the  reflection  that 
I  should  have  been  able  to  find  pleasure  in  such  a  rela- 
tion at  that  time.  Less  than  three  months  earlier  I  was  a 
solitary,  proud  of  my  isolation.  I  would  not  look  out  of 
the  window  when  Herz  was  passing  because  I  feared  the 
beginnings  of  social  intercourse  with  the  other  lodgers  in 
the  house.  Some  very  essential  change  must  certainly  have 
been  worked  in  me  during  that  first  month  in  Keppel  Street. 
Hill  deserves  some  credit  as  the  agent  of  the  magician, 
but  Hill  was  only  an  agent. 

He  was  away  for  Christmas,  as  were,  also,  Mrs.  Har- 
greave, Lippmann  and  Herz— the  two  latter  went  home  to 
Germany ;  but  the  Meares,  Helen,  Judith  and  I  had  a  festival 
at  Simpson's.  The  Meares  chose  the  rendezvous;  they  in- 
sisted on  a  real  English  Christmas  dinner. 

I  had  anticipated  some  offer  of  reconciliation  from  Ken 
Lodge,  but  none  came;  and  I  decided  that  my  uncle  had 


220  HOUSE-MATES 

been  hopelessly  offended  by  my  quarrel  with  the  curly 
Blake.  I  never  expected  Gladys  to  notice  me  again;  she 
would  think  I  despised  her,  and  contempt  was  a  thing  she 
could  not  endure;  but  I  had  certainly  looked  forward  to 
some  offer  of  reconciliation  from  my  uncle. 

And  the  complete  disregard  of  my  existence  evidenced 
by  his  omission  of  any  Christmas  greeting,  was  certainly  a 
factor  in  my  decision  to  invest  in  the  Meares  enterprise. 
I  had  been  paid  for  Parkinson's  job,  but  I  had  no  other 
decently  remunerative  work  in  sight — my  casual  contribu- 
tions to  the  technical  journals  were  not  well  paid  and  I 
looked  upon  them  more  as  an  advertisement  than  as  a 
possible  source  of  income.  It  is  true  that  my  competition 
drawings  were  nearly  finished,  and  that  there  was  always 
a  Hope,  but  I  counted  very  little  on  that.  I  knew,  now 
when  it  was  too  late,  that  I  had  taken  a  bad  line  with 
my  plan  from  the  beginning.  I  had  not  been  at  my  best 
when  I  began  those  drawings.  So,  it  chanced  that  the 
first  serious  doubts  as  to  my  financial  future  coincided  with 
the  temptation  to  plunge. 

Meares  was  more  cheerful  about  that  time.  By  some 
means  or  another  he  had  obtained  promises  of  various  sums 
that  were  now  mounting  up  towards  the  desiderated  £10,000 
he  had  named  as  the  lowest  possible  capital  he  required  to 
work  his  mine;  but,  at  the  same  time,  he  admitted  with  a 
hint  of  chagrin  that  he  had  been  compelled  to  forsake  his 
original  plan. 

"You  see,  it's  like  this,  Mr.  Hornby,"  he  said  one  evening 
in  my  rooms  about  a  week  after  Christmas,  "you  can't  very 
well  ask  a  man  to  invest  four  or  five  hundred  pounds  at 
ten  per  cent.  It  isn't  worth  his  while." 

"Then  what's  the  idea  now?"  I  asked. 

"It  amounts  to  forming  a  syndicate,  Mr.  Hornby,"  he 
said  very  seriously.  "I  propose  to  start  the  mines  and  when 
we're  turning  out  the  stuff,  sell  the  original  shares  to  a 
bigger  company  with  the  condition  that  I  remain  in  as 
general  manager  on  the  spot." 

"And  the  difference  is?"  I  suggested. 


JUDITH 

"Well,  either  the  members  of  the  syndicate  get  their 
money  back  in  six  months  with  a  bonus  of  two  hundred  per 
cent,  or  they  can  take  up  shares  in  the  new  company  to 
the  extent  of  four  times  their  original  holding." 

Perhaps  he  still  saw  some  marks  of  perplexity  on  my 
face  for  he  dropped  into  the  personal  application  that 
finally  settled  me. 

''Well,  for  instance,  Mr.  Hornby,  you  put  five  hundred 
into  this  preliminary  company,"  he  went  on,  "you  or  any- 
body, of  course;  and  when  we  form  the  larger  company 
in  six  months'  time,  you  have  the  option  of  selling  your 
interest  for  fifteen  hundred  cash  or  taking  up  two  thousand 
pound  shares  in  the  new  company." 

I  had  not  five  hundred  pounds  to  spare,  but  I  do  not 
remember  wincing  when  I  wrote  out  a  cheque  for  half 
that  sum.  Meares  asked  me  to  leave  the  actual  payment 
over  until  all  his  promises  were  obtained  and  he  could 
realise  the  full  amount  he  wanted;  but  I  preferred  to 
complete  the  transaction  on  the  spot.  He  gave  me  an 
elaborately  formal  receipt,  and  begged  me  not  to  regard 
myself  as  finally  committed. 

"We've  been  like  friends  here,  if  I  may  say  so,"  he  said 
with  a  touch  of  emotion,  "and  Fd  like  to  treat  this  transac- 
tion as  between  friends.  What  I  mean  to  say  is,  Mr.  Hornby, 
if  you  change  your  mind  any  time  between  now  and  the 
registration  of  the  syndicate,  don't  hesitate  to  say  so.  This 
money's  ready  for  you  any  time  you  want  it." 

"Oh!  that's  all  right,  old  chap,"  I  said  genially. 

I  believe  I  had  a  feeling  that  my  two  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  might  begin  to  increase  from  the  moment  it  was 
in  Meares's  hands,  and  I  foresaw,  already,  that  in  six 
months'  time  that  increase  might  be  urgently  needed. 

Without  giving  the  transaction  reasonable  consideration, 
I  accepted  Meares's  optimistic  mention  of  six  months  as  a 
definite  time  limit,  and  mentally  reckoned  my  resources  no 
further  than  the  middle  of  July.  But  meanwhile  I  thought 
out  material  for  two  more  technical  articles,  and  entered 
for  the  next  competition  I  saw  advertised.  I  received  the 


222  HOUSE-MATES 

particulars  before  I  had  completed  the  set  of  drawings  I 
was  then  engaged  upon. 


I  must  confess  that  I  find  it  very  difficult  to  give  any- 
thing like  a  consecutive  account  of  my  life  through  that 
critical  month  of  January,  1906.  The  general  election  that 
returned  the  Liberals  to  power  with  such  a  tremendous  ma- 
jority appears  now  to  be  the  most  incidental  affair.  And 
yet  it  certainly  effected  me;  even  vitally. 

I  remember  going  down  to  the  Embankment  with  Hill 
to  see  the  results  go  upon  a  big  screen,  erected,  I  think, 
on  or  very  near  the  offices  of  The  Daily  Mail;  and  I  see 
myself  there  as  a  very  perplexed  Wilfred  Hornby,  a  little 
dazed  by  his  detachment  from  the  emotion  of  the  crowd. 

But  that  election  and  the  conversations  I  had  with  Hill 
broke  my  automatic  acceptance  of  the  Conservative  tradi- 
tion, although  I  never  became  a  Liberal.  When  I  escaped 
from  my  mechanical  reservations  concerning  party  govern- 
ment, I  came  directly  out  into  the  freedom  of  one  who 
owes  no  allegiance  to  either  side. 

Yet  at  the  time  I  did  not  realise  that  I  was  extending 
my  liberty. 

But  all  the  outside  influences  of  that  January  were  col- 
oured by  my  relations  with  Judith. 


VI 

Our  movement  towards  friendship  was  infinitely  slow 
during  the  weeks  that  immediately  followed  our  talk  by 
the  Spaniards.  We  were  never  alone  together,  and  when 
we  met  in  the  company  of  Helen,  Judith  always  seemed 
to  me  to  be  nervous  and  constrained.  She  used  to  watch 
Helen  with  a  look  that  I  felt  was  in  some  way  doubtful 
and  uneasy,  and  she  treated  me  on  many  occasions  with  a 
definite  coldness  that  I  was  sure  was  a  mere  assumption; 


JUDITH  223 

adopted,  perhaps,  to  modify  Helen's  marked  air  of  com- 
radeship. 

And  that,  also,  was  a  thing  I  could  not  understand.  For 
the  Helen  I  saw,  after  our  reconciliation  at  my  tea-party, 
was  a  new  person  altogether.  She  no  longer  scowled  and 
brooded  when  I  was  with  her ;  on  the  contrary,  she  singled 
me  out  for  special  attention.  During  our  Sunday  gather- 
ings she  would  ask  me  questions  about  the  architecture  of 
London  or  about  art  in  general;  questions  that  appealed 
to  my  authority  as  a  specialist  and  gave  me  control  of 
the  conversation.  She  flattered  me,  in  fact,  by  "drawing  me 
out,"  as  she  might  have  phrased  it,  by  the  interest  of  her 
attention  to  my  opinion. 

I  accepted  it  all  in  good  faith,  and  responded  without 
effort  to  her  overtures.  I  believed  that  she  was  trying  to 
make  amends  for  her  former  misjudgment  of  me,  and  I 
did  my  best  to  convey  that  I,  too,  had  been  at  fault.  I 
lost  my  mistrust  of  the  quality  of  the  relations  between 
her  and  Judith;  and  came  to  believe  that  Helen  might  be 
made  an  ally. 

I  was  not  surprised  when  she  came  down  alone  to  my 
sitting-room  for  the  first  time  one  morning,  a  few  days 
after  Christmas.  I  had  been  hoping  to  find  some  oppor- 
tunity for  a  greater  frankness  than  was  possible  in  the 
presence  of  any  third  person,  and  when  she  knocked  at  my 
door  and  came  in  with  the  excuse  of  wanting  to  borrow 
a  book,  I  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  she,  also,  had  felt 
the  necessity  for  an  apology  or,  at  least,  an  explanation. 

Perhaps  I  was  over-anxious  to  make  a  show  of  welcom- 
ing her  on  that  occasion,  for  she  was  evidently  nervous, 
selected  a  book  hurriedly,  thanked  me  with  a  queer,  little 
mincing  smile,  and  retreated  before  I  had  time  to  begin  any 
sort  of  general  conversation.  I  thought  that  she  had, 
perhaps,  meant  to  make  a  full  explanation  of  her  old 
animosity  and  that  her  courage  had  failed  her  when  she 
found  herself  alone  with  me. 

But  two  or  three  days  later  she  came  down  again  to 
exchange  her  book ;  and  this  time  she  stayed  longer.  After 


HOUSE-MATES 

the  new  book  had  been  chosen,  she  went  over  to  my  board 
and  began  to  ask  me  about  my  work.  I  had  the  block 
plan  of  my  new  competition  laid  down,  and  as  there  were 
several  separate  buildings  to  be  arranged  on  a  rather  awk- 
ward site,  I  had  cut  out  the  ground  plans  of  my  several 
blocks  in  stiff  paper  to  try  the  effects  of  their  various  rela- 
tions to  each  other,  and  the  frontage  and  the  fall  of  the 
ground. 

"Oh!  what  are  all  those  funny  little  things?"  Helen 
asked.  "They  look  like  little  beetles." 

I  explained  as  well  as  I  could,  but  she  continually  inter- 
rupted me  with  irrelevant  questions  about  such  things  as 
the  use  of  my  set  squares  or  spring-bow  compasses;  and 
she  had  an  unnatural  way  of  looking  at  me  with  a  sort 
of  archness  that  made  me  feel  vaguely  uncomfortable.  It 
was  impossible  to  approach  any  serious  understanding  while 
she  looked  at  me  like  that.  I  attributed  it  all  to  nervous- 
ness and  wondered  if  her  earlier  manner  might  not  have 
been  partly  attributable  to  the  same  cause.  If  my  own 
feelings  were  any  test,  that  explanation  was  certainly  the 
correct  one.  I  found  myself  inexplicably  uncomfortable 
and  ill  at  ease  when  I  was  alone  with  her. 

And  it  was  this  very  uneasiness  that  precipitated  the 
extraordinary  situation  which  finally  altered  all  our  atti- 
tudes and  cleared  away  the  uncertainties  if  not  the  jeal- 
ousies that  so  complicated  any  intercourse  between  Helen 
and  myself.  I  was  annoyed  by  my  own  ineptitude,  and 
when  she  came  down  for  the  third  time  I  desperately  at- 
tempted to  achieve  some  confidence  of  manner. 

I  realised  some  change  in  her  appearance  when  she  en- 
tered the  room,  and  saw  almost  at  once  that  she  had  dressed 
her  hair  in  a  new  way.  She  had  quite  remarkable  hair, 
but  she  usually  dressed  it  so  badly,  screwing  and  plaiting  It 
into  a  kind  of  tight  helmet,  that  I  had  hardly  noticed  it 
until  then.  Now  I  saw  it  must  be  very  abundant,  if  a  little 
coarse  in  texture,  and  that  there  was  much  more  colour 
in  it  than  I  had  supposed ;  I  found  veins  of  deep  red  browns 
here  and  there,  almost  the  tone  of  old  mahogany. 


JUDITH 

I  essayed  a  lighter  note,  at  once,  by  commenting  on  the 
improvement. 

"Why  don't  you  always  wear  your  hair  like  that?"  I 
asked.  "You've  never  done  it  justice  before." 

She  had  come  into  the  room  then,  and  was  leaning  against 
the  end  of  the  table,  her  hands  gripping  the  edge.  She 
had  a  very  passable  figure,  and  she  looked,  I  thought,  al- 
most handsome — only  the  dead  slate-blue  of  her  eyes  and 
the  untidy  coarseness  of  her  eyebrows  still  repelled  me. 

She  showed  a  passing  shade  of  emotion  when  I  praised 
her.  Something  that  might  have  been  fear  or  disgust 
came  into  her  expression  for  a  moment,  and  then  she  ap- 
peared to  rally  herself  and  said,  again  with  that  detestable 
suggestion  of  archness: 

"How  quick  you  are  to  notice  things !" 

"It  makes  such  a  tremendous  difference  in  you,"  I  said, 
still  struggling  to  achieve  a  light,  easy  touch. 

"Does  it?"  she  asked.  "I'm  glad  you  think  it's  an  im- 
provement." 

I  accepted  that  as  a  tribute  to  my  supposed  powers  of 
artistic  perception. 

"It  seems  such  a  pity,"  I  said,  "that  women  should  not 
be  as  beautiful  as  they  can." 

She  looked  down  and  a  dark  flush  crept  up  under  her 
rather  sallow  skin. 

"I  suppose,"  she  said,  "that  a  woman  wants  to — to  have 
some  object." 

"Doesn't  Miss  Carrington  prefer  your  hair  done  like 
that?"  I  asked. 

"Oh!  yes,"  she  said,  "but— but,  well,  Judith's  approval 
isn't  everything,  is  it?" 

I  thought  it  was,  but  I  was  still  trying  to  propitiate  Helen 
in  the  vain  hope  of  establishing  some  kind  of  sincerity 
between  us.  (f 

"What  other  approval  do  you  want?"  I  asked, 
applause  of  the  multitude?" 

She  shook  her  head,  stammered  something  I  could  not 
hear,  and  then  changed  the  conversation  by  saying, 


226  HOUSE-MATES 

"You  do  work  very  hard,  don't  you?" 

"It's  that  competition  I  showed  you  a  few  days  ago,"  I 
said.  "It  means  a  lot  of  work." 

"You  sit  up  to  all  hours,"  she  went  on  quickly,  taking 
no  notice  of  my  explanation.  "There's  always  a  light  in  here 
when  we  come  back  from  the  theatre." 

"I  generally  go  to  bed  about  twelve,"  I  remarked. 

"Do  you  work  all  the  evening  ?"  was  her  next  question. 

"Sometimes,"  I  said. 

She  was  embarrassing  me  again ;  looking  at  me  with  that 
expression  which  in  another  woman  I  might  have  called 
coquettish.  But  that  interpretation  never  occurred  to  me 
in  connexion  with  Helen;  I  only  thought  that  she  was  still 
foolishly  nervous.  I  wished  she  would  return  to  her  earlier 
treatment  of  me;  that,  at  least,  would  give  me  a  chance 
to  speak  frankly. 

"Judith  is  going  without  me,  this  evening,"  she  said  and 
looked  down  again. 

"Oh!"  was  all  the  comment  I  found  to  make  on  that 
statement. 

"She's  taking  Mrs.  Meares  to  the  St.  James',"  she  ex- 
plained. 

"Is  she?"  I  said. 

"So  I  shall  be  all  alone,"  she  went  on. 

I  had  no  idea  what  she  was  trying  to  suggest,  but  I  felt 
that  I  must  say  something.  "Oh!  well,  so  shall  I,"  I  re- 
turned with  an  affectation  of  gaiety.  "Grinding  away  at 
these  infernal  drawings,  I  suppose." 

"It  seems  a  pity  .  .  ."  she  began  and  stopped  abruptly. 

"Nothing  else  to  do,"  I  said,  pretending  disgust. 

That  dark  flush  had  come  back  to  her  cheeks  and  she 
seemed  to  be  struggling  with  some  speech  she  could  not 
bring  herself  to  utter. 

"Oh!  well,"  she  broke  out  suddenly,  "I'm  interrupting 
your  work — now." 

She  went  out  quickly,  without  speaking  again  and  with- 
out taking  the  book  she  had  presumably  come  to  fetch. 


JUDITH  227 


VII 


The  house  seemed  to  me  unusually  quiet  and  empty  that 
evening.  Possibly  a  large  proportion  of  its  occupants 
chanced  to  be  out,  and  my  feeling  may  have  been  justified. 
But  the  true  reason  of  my  consciousness  of  a  deserted 
dwelling  was  the  knowledge  that  Judith  was  away. 

She  had  never  been  down  to  my  rooms  after  dinner,  and 
I  had  only  once  met  her  elsewhere  in  the  house  during  the 
evening.  But  I  loved  to  know  that  she  was  there,  near 
4o  me.  When  I  knew  that  she  was  away,  I  felt  as  if  the 
key  of  all  life  had  suddenly  dropped  a  third;  as  if  the 
motive  had  changed  from  a  brave  challenging  march  to  the 
weary  steadiness  of  a  persistent  minor. 

It  was  a  little  after  ten  when  I  heard  a  cautious  step  on 
the  long  straight  flight  of  stairs  that  led  down  to  the  hall. 
I  was  reading  with  my  back  to  the  table,  by  the  light  of 
a  lamp  I  had  brought  from  our  house  in  the  North  End 
Road.  I  preferred  an  oil  lamp  for  reading,  the  gas  at 
"73"  was  ver7  unsteady.  I  thought  at  first  that  the  step 
must  be  that  of  Herz,  who  had  a  habit  of  going  out  to 
post  letters  at  midnight;  and  even  when  I  heard  my  door 
being  quietly  opened  I  still  fancied  that  it  might  be  the 
little  German  come  to  borrow  note-paper  or  stamps. 

I  looked  round  with  a  touch  of  impatience,  but  the  lamp 
was  directly  between  me  and  the  door,  and  all  I  could  see 
was  the  shining  of  some  pale  drapery  just  over  my  horizon 
of  the  table's  edge. 

I  jumped  to  my  feet,  already  a  trifle  startled  by  that 
apparition,  to  find  Helen  in  a  long  white  dressing-gown, 
with  her  hair  streaming  over  her  shoulders  and  down  to 
her  waist. 

She  shut  the  door  definitely  behind  her  and  stared  at  me. 

"I've  come,"  she  said. 

Even  then  I  did  not  guess.  I  asked  her  to  come  in  and 
sit  down.  I  was  finding  excuses  for  her;  telling  myself 
that  she  had  undressed  before  she  found  that  she  had 


228  HOUSE-MATES 

nothing  to  read,  and  that  she  had  hurried  down  to  fetch 
the  book  she  had  forgotten  in  the  morning;  and,  further, 
that  her  association  with  the  stage  must  be  allowed  for 
— this  visit  of  hers  was  no  doubt  typical  of  the  freedoms 
that  obtain  in  the  theatrical  profession.  I  could  find  plenty 
of  excuses  for  her  visit  in  that  attire,  but  I  could  not  per- 
suade the  stiff  formal  mind  of  the  old  Wilfred  Hornby  who 
still  lived  with  me;  and  when  she  came  and  sat  down 
opposite  to  me  in  the  other  arm-chair,  my  prevailing  desire 
was  to  be  rid  of  her  as  soon  as  possible. 

"You've  come  for  your  book  ?"  I  said,  and  tried,  perhaps 
with  a  grotesque  distortion  of  my  intention,  to  appear  at 
ease. 

"Oh!  yes,  of  course  for  my  book,"  she  echoed  in  a  little 
hurrying  voice.  "That  will  do,  won't  it?" 

I  had  been  standing  by  the  table  since  she  entered  the 
room,  and  I  walked  across  to  the  bookcase.  I  knew  that 
I  could  show  a  more  convincing  appearance  of  ease  if  I 
did  not  look  at  her. 

"Let  me  see,  what  did  you  take  last?"  I  asked,  crouching 
down  over  the  bookcase. 

"Oh!  does  it  matter?    Anything!"  she  said. 

"Anything?"  I  returned.  "Well,  Gwilt's  Encyclopaedia 
of  Architecture  for  instance  ?" 

"Anything  that  will  do  for  an  excuse,"  she  said. 

I  must  have  been  very  near  illumination,  then,  for  a  sud- 
den rigour  of  cold  nervousness  overtook  me,  but  I  was 
hunting  explanations  again  and  evaded  the  truth  a  few 
moments  longer. 

I  came  back  to  my  chair  with  the  book  still  unfound. 

"An  excuse?"  I  repeated.  "Wasn't  it  that  you  really 
wanted?" 

She  shook  her  head  and  her  mouth  was  set  and  her  jaw 
rigid  as  if  she  were  clenching  her  teeth.  Then  she  turned 
her  profile  to  me  and  stretched  out  her  hands  to  the  fire. 

I  had  missed  or  misinterpreted  a  dozen  clear  indications, 
and  it  may  seem  strange  that  I  shotrfd  have  leapt  instantly 


JUDITH  229 

to  realisation  at  a  sight  that  might  so  easily  have  borne 
another  construction. 

But  when  I  saw  that  the  hands  she  had  stretched  out 
were  trembling,  that  her  arms  and  her  whole  body  were 
trembling,  that  if  she  had  not  so  rigidly  locked  her  teeth 
they  would  certainly  have  chattered — I  knew  beyond  all 
further  shadow  of  doubt  that  she  had  come  to  offer  her-, 
self  in  order  to  save  Judith. 

I  had  reason  enough  for  anger,  but  I  felt  none.  1  under- 
stood, now,  not  only  how  she  had  played  and  pretended 
with  me,  but,  also,  the  flat  insult  of  her  estimate  of  my 
character.  She  had  believed  that  I  was  a  creature  to  be 
tempted  by  the  prospect  of  any  sensual  emotion ;  that  I  was 
the  indiscriminate  woman-hunter  she  had  judged  me  to  be 
at  our  first  meeting.  And  yet,  my  only  feeling  for  her  was 
one  of  great  pity,  of  commiseration,  of  a  desire  to  save  her 
from  committing  herself. 

"Don't  you  think  you  had  better  go  now?"  I  asked 
clumsily. 

Her  trembling  stopped  at  once  and  she  looked  round 
at  me  with  a  quick  suspicion  in  her  dull  eyes. 

"What  do  you  mean?"  she  asked. 

I  was  hardly  less  nervous  than  she  was  and  my  excuse 
was  heavily  inept. 

"I'm  rather  tired  to-night,"  I  said.  "I  have  been  swat- 
ting away  at  that  bally  competition  until  I  can  hardly  keep 
my  eyes  open.  In  fact,  I  believe  I  was  actually  asleep 
when  you  came  down  .  .  ." 

I  should  have  gone  blundering  on,  but  she  cut  me  short 
by  saying, 

"Perhaps  you  don't  understand?" 

I  saw,  then,  how  desperate  she  was ;  how  she  had  stif- 
fened herself,  and  allowed  this  one  mad  idea  to  dominate 
her  until  its  realisation  seemed  her  only  possible  means  of 
relief. 

I  do  not  know  what  sudden  emotion  prompted  the  reply 
that  came  to  me,  but  I  believe  that  no  consideration  could 
have  bettered  it. 


230  HOUSE-MATES 

"I  understand  how  prejudiced  you  are,  how  unjust  you 
are  to  me,"  I  said,  and  I  jumped  out  of  my  chair  and  began 
to  pace  the  length  of  the  room.  "You're  blind,"  I  went  on, 
"blind  to  everything  but  your  jealousy.  You're  not  fair, 
you're  not  the  least  reasonable.  Yes !  I  have  got  a  griev- 
ance. I've  tried  to  be  fair  to  you,  and  you've  shut  your 
eyes  and  clenched  your  teeth  and  determined  with  all  your 
might  to  hate  me  whatever  happened.  You're  not  the  only 
person  who  has  a  right  to  love  Judith  .  .  ." 

"You've  no  right,  anyway,"  she  interrupted  me. 

"Why  not?"  I  asked  angrily.  "Why  not?  Why 
haven't  I?" 

"Every  one  knows  the  sort  of  man  you  are,"  she  said. 

She  was  standing  up,  now,  facing  me  with  a  timid  de- 
fiance. I  could  see  that  she  was  afraid  of  the  sound  of 
her  own  words,  and  yet  she  was  braced  to  an  immense 
effort. 

"That's  absolutely  rot!"  I  said  boyishly. 

She  clutched  the  table  and  watched  me  with  the  desperate 
courage  of  the  trapped  animal  putting  out  its  last  great 
effort. 

"I  know,"  she  said.  "I  know  about  you  and  Miss  Whit- 
ing. You  were  in  her  room  before  that  row  began.  You're 
the  sort  of  man  who  ought  to  be — exterminated." 

I  had  begun  to  smile  before  she  reached  the  end  of 
that  accusation  and  I  think  my  confidence  unexpectedly 
broke  her.  She  gulped  and  put  her  hand  to  her  throat  as 
she  came  to  her  weak  ending;  and  before  I  had  time  to 
make  any  reply  she  burst  into  violent  hysterics. 

I  stood  there  like  a  fool,  fairly  beaten,  now,  afraid  to 
touch  her,  afraid  to  speak ;  and  she  swayed  and  rocked  and 
cried  noisily  with  great  hiccoughing  gasps  that  made  me 
feel  physically  sick.  Something  within  me  pitied  her  and 
yearned  to  console  and  reassure  her,  but  the  physical  inter- 
posed between  us.  I  felt  unable  to  approach  her.  It  was 
as  if  my  spirit  lamented  but  my  body  refused  any  kind  of 
response.  I  tried  to  overcome  and  could  not  overcome 
my  awful  repugnance  for  that  dishevelled  figure  with  its 


JUDITH  g31 

horrible  retching,  maniacal  cries,  even  though  I  knew  that 
her  spirit,  also,  stood  back,  bewildered  and  grieved,  from 
the  clumsy  instrument  of  the  flesh. 

I  stood  stock  still  like  a  foolish  automaton,  and  the  strug- 
gle within  myself  reeled  backwards  and  forwards  and  found 
no  expression.  .  .  . 

But  afte.  an  immeasurable  period  of  time  it  seemed  as 
if  the  storm  had  swept  through  her.  She  dropped  to  her 
knees  and  crossing  her  arms  on  the  table,  hid  her  face  in 
them.  She  was  almost  quiet,  now,  but  ever  and  again  a 
great  sob  heaved  and  broke  like  a  renewed  gush  of  water 
through  an  emptying  conduit. 

I  had  a  sense  of  returning  peace,  even  before  she  spoke. 

"I  was  so  ...  so,"  she  gasped  without  moving  her  head, 
and  then  one  of  those  great  gulping  sobs  broke  her  sentence 
and  for  a  moment  I  hardly  understood  the  whispered 
"afraid"  that  followed  like  the  little  voice  of  a  distant 
priest  down  the  remoteness  of  the  abruptly  silent  nave. 

"Afraid?"  I  said,  and  my  voice  sounded  harsh  and  loud. 
"Surely,  you  weren't  afraid  of  Me?" 

She  looked  up  and  then  dragged  herself  to  her  feet.  All 
the  emotion  was  drained  out  of  her  but  something  of  her 
original  resolution  still  showed  in  her  brooding  eyes. 

Her  voice  sounded  flat  and  tired  as  she  answered  me. 

"Yes,  of  you,"  she  said.  "If  you're  not  that  kind  of 
man,  why  did  you  insult  us  at  the  beginning?" 

I  sighed,  considering  the  hopelessness  of  any  reasonable 
explanation. 

"I  didn't  know,"  I  said  lamely. 

She  seemed  to  stare  at  that  without  understanding  it,  and 
then  she  said,  in  the  same  dull  voice, 

"Suppose  it  had  been  Judith  to-night  instead  of  me  ?" 

I  forgot  my  pity  for  her  when  she  said  that.  There  was 
something  infinitely  revolting  to  me  in  her  suggestion. 

"Good  Lord!  What  a  beast  you  must  be!"  I  said. 
"Judith !  Can't  you  see  that  she  is  the  most  sacred  and  won- 
derful person  in  the  world?  Is  that  all  your  pretended 
love  comes  to  ?"  My  impetuosity  choked  me. 


HOUSE-MATES 

"I  only  wanted  to  save  her,"  she  said  with  the  first  hint 
of  personal  defence.  "I  don't  care  how  much  you  despise 
me.  You  can  think  anything  you  like  about  me."  Her 
voice  trailed  out  into  the  dreariness  of  sheer  apathy,  and 
she  took  a  couple  of  limping  steps  towards  the  door.  I  was 
sorry  for  her,  again,  but  I  could  find  no  convincing  expres- 
sion of  my  sympathy.  I  thought  that  she  was  going  at 
last,  but  when  she  had  reached  the  door  she  seemed  to  realise 
the  threat  of  her  failure  and  turned  round  with,  perhaps, 
a  final  wondering  hope  that  everything  was  not  absolutely 
lost. 

"You're  quite  sure?"  she  asked  simply. 

"Oh!  how  can  you  be  so  silly?"  I  replied  as  gently  as 
I  could. 

"And,  of  course,  you'll  tell  Judith  all  about  it?"  she  con- 
tinued. 

"I  certainly  shall  not,"  I  said. 

"Why  not?  You'd  better!"  she  returned.  "She'd  hate 
me  for  it,  probably.  She  doesn't  care  for  me,  now,  as  mach 
as  she  used  to." 

"I  shan't  say  a  word  to  anybody,"  I  said. 

"Not  even  to  clear  your  own  character?"  she  persisted, 
returning  to  that  stubborn  suspicion  of  me,  which  she  was 
never  able  completely  to  conquer. 

"That's  merely  silly,"  I  said. 

She  sighed  miserably  as  she  went  out.  I  heard  her  slow, 
dejected  footsteps  tediously  climbing  the  stairs. 


VIII 

All  that  scene  ..between  Helen  and  myself  had  a  strange 
air  of  unreality  when  I  reflected  on  it  next  morning.  I  felt 
as  if  I  had  witnessed  it  from  a  distance,  as  if  I  had  played 
no  part  in  it  myself.  My  thought  of  it  had  the  same  quality 
as  my  thought  of  the  moonlight  walk  with  the  little  doctor 
on  the  night  of  my  father's  death.  On  that  occasion,  also, 
the  physical  presentation  of  myself  had  been  cut  adrift  from 


JUDITH  233 

the  emotional,  and  I  had  found  no  possibility  of  uniting 
them. 

I  had  been  so  reserved,  so  detached,  so  inarticulate.  The 
more  I  pondered  my  own  part  in  the  affair,  the  more  clearly 
I  realised  that  I  had  been  acting,  and  that  the  actress  Helen 
had  been  moved  by  genuine,  spontaneous  impulses.  I  had 
admired  her  effort  even  when  I  had  been  most  repelled; 
but  in  the  morning  I  found  her  attempted  sacrifice  per- 
fectly heroic.  She  had  dared  so  much,  and  her  motive  had 
been  so  disinterested. 

For,  thinking  over  the  whole  thing  that  morning,  I  could 
only  come  to  the  conclusion  that  she  must  have  taken  ac- 
count of  the  possibility  that  if  her  mad  plan  succeeded,  she 
might  lose  Judith's  friendship.  She  had  certainly  been 
prepared  to  risk  that  issue.  "You'd  better  tell  Judith,"  she 
had  said;  "she'll  hate  me  for  it,  probably."  And  I  could 
only  infer  that  she  would  have  counted  that  loss  as  bearable, 
if  she  could  know,  at  the  same  time,  that  Judith  had  been 
saved — from  Me. 

I  began  very  seriously  to  doubt  whether  I  were  not  some 
kind  of  horror  that  ought,  as  Helen  had  said,  to  be  ex- 
terminated. 

What  would  happen  next,  I  had  no  idea,  but  I  was  cheered 
by  the  certainty  that  some  rearrangement  must  follow  last 
night's  drama.  My  general  feeling  was  that  Helen,  having 
failed,  would  cease  to  stand  between  me  and  Judith, 
imagined  her  dropping  to  a  relative  unimportance,  and  I 
was  sincerely  sorry  for  her.  I  made  foolish  plans  in  which 
Judith  and  I  recompensed  Helen  for  all  the  suffering  she 
had  brought  upon  herself  by  her  wrong-headed  estimate 
of  me. 

Two  possibilities  I  never  considered.    The  first  was  that 
Judith  would  be  told  of  what  Helen  had  attempted;  the 
second  was  that  Helen  might  misrepresent  _  the   facts, 
trusted  her  honesty,  with  a  really  touching  simplicity.  .  .  . 

Little  Pferdminger  popped  in  about  twelve  o'clock, 
remembered  afterwards  that  he  had  an  unusual  air  of  reso- 
lution in  his  bearing,  but  I  scarcely  noticed  it  at  the  time. 


234  HOUSE-MATES 

had  settled  down  in  dead  earnest  to  my  work  after  the  dis- 
tractions of  the  early  morning,  and  I  turned  upon  him,  pet- 
tishly, with  a  curt,  "Well,  what  is  it?" 

His  left  eye  immediately  intimated  that  it  intended  to 
take  no  part  in  the  interview,  and  then  the  little  man,  him- 
self, also  appeared  willing  to  cancel  the  imperiousness  of 
his  entrance. 

"You  are  occupied?"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  I  replied. 

"So !"  he  said.  "It  vill  vait,"  and  went  without  another 
word. 

I  heard  him  go  upstairs,  wondered  vaguely  for  a  mo- 
ment what  he  was  up  to,  and  then  lost  myself  again  in 
my  work.  I  meant  to  make  no  mistake  about  my  plan 
for  this  new  competition. 

I  think  it  must  have  been  nearly  an  hour  later  when 
Hill  came  in. 

I  glanced  at  him  over  my  shoulder,  and  waved  my  hand 
towards  the  fireplace.  "In  one  minute!"  I  said. 

But  he  would  not  take  that  hint.  He  came  over  to  my 
board  and  put  his  hand  on  my  arm.  "Look  here,  Hornby," 
he  said,  "what  the  devil  have  you  been  up  to  ?" 

I  stared  at  him  abstractedly,  and  saw  in  that  instant  the 
ideal  arrangement  of  my  plan  I  had  so  wilfully  missed 
during  the  last  two  hours. 

"Been  up  to  ?"  I  repeated  automatically  and  made  a  brief 
note  of  my  inspiration  on  the  side  of  my  drawing. 

"If  you  don't  mean  to  tell  me,  say  so!"  Hill  went  on 
sternly.  "Don't  play  the  fool  and  pretend." 

I  came  out  of  my  preoccupation  then  and  stared  at  him. 

"I  just  wanted  to  get  this  thing  right,"  I  said.  "What 
is  it  you  want  to  know?" 

"I  want  to  know  if  there's  any  truth  in  the  confounded 
row  little  Pferdminger  has  been  making  about  you  and 
Helen,"  he  demanded. 

"What?"  I  said.  I  was  completely  staggered  for  the 
moment.  If  Hill  had  suddenly  smacked  my  face,  I  could 
not  have  been  more  disconcerted. 


JUDITH  235 

Hill  frowned.    "I  can't  believe  .  .  ."  he  began. 

"Well,  of  course  not,"  I  said.  "But  tell  me  what  he  has 
been  saying,  anyhow,  and  to  whom?" 

"To  Helen  and  Judith  in  the  first  instance,"  Hill  said. 
•'He  was  foaming  and  bullying  up  there  until  Judith,  ap- 
parently, turned  him  out ;  and  then  he  came  down  to  me  full 
of  virtue  and  tremendously  injured." 

"And  his  story  is?"  I  interposed. 

"That  Helen  came  to  you  here  last  night  between  ten  and 
eleven  in  her  night-dress  and  with  her  hair  down,  stayed 
with  you  an  hour,  and — well,  he  added  some  very  distress- 
ing details  of  his  observations  on  your  conduct.  He  could 
not  see  anything,  he  admits,  but  he  heard — unusual  sounds ; 
and  his  description  of  Helen's  return  to  her  own  room 
was  graphic  beyond  the  powers  of  his  imagination." 

"Oh!  Hell!"  was  my  only  comment;  I  could  think  of 
nothing  else  to  say. 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  that  it's  true,  Hornby,"  Hill  said 
with  a  note  of  something  like  grief  in  his  voice. 

"The  facts  are;  not  the  interpretation,"  I  said. 

I  am  glad  to  remember  that  Hill  believed  me  without 
the  necessity  for  any  further  protestation  on  my  part. 

"You  will  have  to  find  an  interpretation  to  stop  Pferd- 
minger's  talk,"  was  all  he  said. 

"Which  won't  be  so  easy,"  I  remarked. 

I  thought  furiously  for  a  few  seconds  and  then  I  went 
on :  "Of  course  you  know  that  Helen  dislikes  me." 

Hill  nodded.  "She's  jealous  of  you,"  he  said.  "I  told  you 
that  months  ago." 

"Well,  all  that  matters,"  I  continued,  "is  that  she  came 
down  last  night  to  have  it  out  with  me.  The  night-dress 
was  a  dressing-gown,  as  a  matter  of  fact.  She  came,  I 
suppose,  on  the  inspiration  of  the  moment.  And  we  had 
the  very  devil  of  a  row,  which  ended  in  hysterics  on  her 
part.  I'll  admit  that  she  made  some  very  queer  noises 
about  that  time." 

"I  understand,"  Hill  said,  "but  Pferdminger  won't.' 

"He  must,"  I  said  and  rang  the  bell  furiously. 


236  HOUSE-MATES 

Pferdminger  answered  it,  himself.  He  came  in  with 
a  pretence  of  bluster,  but  flying  his  usual  signal  of  nervous- 
ness. 

"Shut  the  door!"  I  snapped  at  him.  I  realised  at  once 
that  I  could  do  what  I  liked  with  him  and  I  felt  in  a  mood 
to  bully. 

"You've  come  up  here  to  apologise,"  I  said  and  stared 
fiercely  at  his  attentive  eye. 

"Apologise?    No!"  he  returned. 

I  gave  him  no  opportunity  to  work  up  his  indignation. 

"You  have  come  to  apologise,"  I  repeated;  "or  take  the 
consequences.  You've  been  spreading  a  grossly  impertinent 
libel  about  me  and  Miss  Binstead,  and  now  you  are  going 
to  confess  that  you  are  a  meddling,  eavesdropping,  little 
liar.  Do  you  understand?" 

"I  haf  told  no  lies,"  he  said.  "I  vill  not  be  called  a 
liar." 

"Hold  your  tongue !"  I  shouted  at  him.  "If  you  dare  to 
contradict  me  again  ..."  I  scowled  at  him,  preferring 
to  leave  the  unspoken  menace  as  a  choice  between  physical 
violence  and  the  immediate  loss  of  one  or  more  tenants ; 
both  reprisals  were  obviously  threatened.  Then  I  dropped 
my  voice  and  went  on :  "You  see,  my  little  man,  you  don't 
understand.  You've  put  your  own  beastly  construction  on 
Miss  Binstead's  visit  to  me  last  night.  I  dare  say  you're 
only  an  ignorant  fool  and  not  malicious ;  but  you've  got  to 
realise  that  you  can't  go  on  making  that  kind  of  mischief 
with  impunity.  This  isn't  Germany,  and  Miss  Binstead  is 
not  the  kind  of  woman  you're  accustomed  to  mix  with." 

I  saw  that  he  was  puzzled  as  well  as  intimidated.  I 
think  the  sincerity  of  my  indignation  had  shaken  him.  He 
was  rather  a  low  little  scoundrel,  and  I  have  little  doubt 
that  he  had  hoped  to  blackmail  a  few  shillings'  increase 
of  rent  out  of  us.  He  had  probably  calculated  on  finding 
us  ashamed  and  humble. 

"But  .  .  ."  he  stammered,  overlooking  my  long  string 
of  insults. 

"But  what?"  I  snapped. 


JUDITH  237 

"I  did  hear  .  .  ."  he  began. 

I  made  a  sound  expressive  of  disgust. 

"You  heard  Miss  Binstead  crying,"  I  said.  "What  of 
it?" 

"But  vy  does  she  come  in  her  nightshirt?"  he  asked 
moodily. 

"She  didn't,"  I  said.  "She  was  wearing  a  dressing- 
gown." 

"But  .  .  ."  he  began  again. 

I  cut  him  short.  "Are  you  going  to  apologise  ?"  I  asked 
viciously. 

He  spread  out  his  hands  with  a  gesture  of  renunciation. 

"Eef  I  make  a  mistake  .  .  ."  he  began. 

"You  most  certainly  have  made  a  mistake,"  I  said. 

"Veil,  then,  I  apologise  to  it,"  he  concluded. 

"Then  go  and  do  it,  at  once,"  I  said.  "Go  now,  this  in- 
stant, and  apologise  to  Miss  Binstead." 

I  expected  a  further  demur,  but  he  made  none.  I  opened 
the  door  for  him  and  watched  him  as  he  went  upstairs 
with  a  sort  of  righteous  insouciance. 

"Do  you  think  he'll  do  it?"  I  asked  Hill. 

Hill  was  grinning.  "Oh!  he'll  do  it,"  he  said.  "But  I 
say,  Hornby,  I  never  guessed  that  you  could  be  such  a  com- 
mander of  men." 

"It's  easy  enough  when  you've  got  the  bulge,  and  the 
men  are  like  Pferdminger,"  I  said. 

"I  don't  know,"  Hill  returned.  "You  were  so  splendidly 
absolute." 

I  knew  what  he  meant  and  wondered  why  I  was  never 
"absolute"  except  when  I  lost  my  temper.  The  last  time 
had  been  on  the  occasion  of  my  interview  with  Blake. 

"It's  a  rotten  thing  to  have  happened,"  I  mumbled,  re- 
suming my  usual  manner. 

Hill  made  no  reply. 

I  had  left  the  door  open  and  a  minute  later  we  saw 
Pferdminger  returning  from  his  mission.  He  stopped  at  the 
threshold  of  my  room  and  bowed. 


238  HOUSE-MATES 

"I  haf  apologise,"  he  said.  "I  say  no  more  at  all  to  any 
one.  I  am  sorry  to  mistake  the  affair." 

"That's  good,"  I  returned.    "Shut  the  door  after  you." 

"Can  we  trust  him  to  hold  his  tongue?"  I  asked  Hill, 
after  a  little  pause. 

"Yes,"  he  said  confidently.  "He  has  taken  his  line.  He 
has  justified  his  respectability  and  now  he  admits  his  mis- 
take. Even  if  he  doesn't  believe  you,  he'll  stick  to  that. 
I've  no  doubt  he'll  apologise  to  you  every  morning  for  a 
week  to  come." 

By  all  of  which  statements  Hill  proved  himself  to  be  a 
true  prophet.  I  had  no  more  trouble  with  Pferdminger 
beyond  the  nuisance  of  his  repeated  explanations. 


IX 

I  thought  that  some  communication  with  Judith  or  Helen 
must  follow  the  events  of  the  morning;  and  I  waited,  ex- 
pecting one  or  both  of  them  either  to  come  down  or  send 
me  a  message. 

I  had  a  new  sense  of  having  been  drawn  into  a  close 
relation  with  them,  of  being  happily  entangled  in  a  new 
and  unavoidable  relevancy  with  the  deepest  interests  of 
their  existence.  We  three  shared,  now,  I  imagined,  the 
secret  of  Helen's  desperate  scheme  to  separate  Judith  and 
me,  a  secret  that  would  surely  constitute  a  wonderful  bond 
between  us.  I  pictured  Helen's  confession  to  Judith,  and 
Judith's  response.  She  would  .see,  as  I  had  seen,  all  the 
fineness  of  the  offered  sacrifice,  and  we  could  find  a  new 
source  of  sympathy  in  our  common  gentleness  for  Helen. 
I  never  doubted  Judith.  I  knew  that  we  were  friends,  tem- 
porarily separated  by  the  force  of  circumstances.  But  I 
looked  forward,  now,  to  a  great  release.  Helen's  opposi- 
tion had  been  dissipated,  she  could  no  longer  have  any  in- 
fluence. She  had  gambled  recklessly  and  lost,  and  now 
she  must  throw  up  her  hands. 

Meanwhile  I  hardly  knew  how  to  control  my  impatience. 


JUDITH  239 

I  could  not  concentrate  my  attention  on  my  work.  I  en- 
larged and  established  the  note  I  had  made  of  my  new 
plan  for  the  competition,  but  I  could  not  begin  the  me- 
chanical work  of  re-drawing  it.  Every  sound  in  the  house 
snatched  my  interest  away  from  my  board.  I  furiously  de- 
sired to  begin  at  once  the  new  relationships  with  Judith 
that  I  imagined  Helen's  confession  would  involve. 

And  a  little  after  three  o'clock  I  heard  footsteps  on  the 
stairs  that  I  instantly  recognised — after  all  the  false  hopes 
of  the  past  two  hours — as  those  for  which  I  had  waited. 
I  sat  quite  still,  and  my  powers  of  hearing  seemed  to  be 
wonderfully  intensified.  And  I  heard  Judith  and  Helen  go 
along  the  hall  without  hesitation,  heard  them  go  out  and 
close  the  front  door  gently  behind  them.  They  passed  my 
window,  but  they  did  not  look  up. 

For  a  moment  I  felt  impelled  to  rush  after  them,  and 
demand  an  explanation.  I  was  filled  with  horrible  fore- 
bodings. All  the  radiance  of  my  anticipations  had  been 
changed  to  the  deepest  gloom  of  doubt.  I  was  sure  that 
there  had  been  some  mistake;  that  some  essential  of  my 
last  night's  scene  with  Helen  had  been  either  concealed 
or  misrepresented. 

Five  minutes  later  I  was  cursing  myself  for  my  failure 
to  follow  Judith.  I  cannot  say  why  I  did  not  obey  that 
immediate  impulse.  My  thought  followed  her,  but  my  body 
had  not  responded.  Perhaps,  the  perverse  habit  of  re- 
serve I  had  cultivated  since  my  first  blunder  had  grown 
too  strong  for  me. 

And  now  I  was  faced  with  the  most  wearing  of  all  trials, 
a  suspense  that  could  not  be  terminated  by  my  own  effort. 
At  first  I  decided  to  wait,  at  my  window,  until  Judith  re- 
turned, and  then  to  waylay  her  boldly  in  the  hall  and  ask 
her  to  tell  me  all  that  had  happened.  But  I  had  not  the 
continence  to  endure  that  waiting.  I  put  on  my  hat  and 
went  out,  not  with  any  foolish  intention  of  trying  to  find 
Judith  in  the  wilderness  of  London,  but  to  seek  relief 
in  action. 

I  had  no  hesitation  as  to  my  choice  of  direction.    I  made 


240  HOUSE-MATES 

straight  for  the  seat  by  the  Spaniards.  When  I  am  alone, 
I  walk  fairly  fast  at  any  time,  but  I  fancy  that  I  must 
have  raced  on  this  occasion.  I  have  a  memory  of  seeing 
surprise  on  the  faces  of  some  of  the  people  I  met ;  and  more 
distinctly  of  a  small  urchin  of  two  or  three  watching  my 
approach  with  a  look  of  stupefied  awe.  He  stood  in  the 
middle  of  the  pavement  in  High  Street,  Camden  Town,  and 
stared  up  at  me  as  he  might  have  stared  at  the  threat  of 
some  rushing,  unavoidable  Juggernaut  of  a  motor.  I  be- 
lieve that  I  stepped  over  him.  He  was  certainly  prepared  to 
immolate  himself. 

It  was  nearly  dark  when  I  reached  the  Spaniards,  and 
the  consecrated  seat  was  occupied  by  two  engrossed  lovers. 
I  began  to  debate,  then,  the  advisability  of  an  instant  re- 
turn to  Keppel  Street,  but  while  my  mind  occupied  itself 
feverishly  with  that  problem,  my  legs  had  carried  me  on 
into  Highgate  Lane,  and  I  continued  my  walk,  still  at 
top  speed,  down  Highgate  Village,  down  West  Hill  and 
into  Kentish  Town. 

I  got  back  to  Keppel  Street  soon  after  five,  wet  with 
perspiration,  but  immensely  determined.  I  went  straight 
up  to  the  third  floor.  I  had  never  been  up  there  before, 
and  had  no  idea  which  was  Judith's  room,  but  I  knocked 
with  authority  at  the  first  door  I  came  to. 

Mrs.  Hargreave's  voice  answered  me  and  I  went  in.  She 
was  sitting  at  the  table,  in  her  fur  coat,  writing. 

"Well?"  she  said,  and  without  waiting  for  me  to  reply, 
added :  "You  look  warm  enough." 

The  room  felt  stuffily  cold.  There  was  no  fire,  but  a 
gas  jet  without  a  globe  was  flaming  on  the  wall  by  the 
mantelpiece. 

"I've  been  walking  rather  fast,"  I  said,  and  was  aston- 
ished to  find  myself  rather  breathless.  "Can  you  tell  me 
which  is  Miss  Carrington's  room?"  I  asked. 

"She's  out,"  Mrs.  Hargreave  returned  coldly.  "Can  I 
give  her  any  message?" 

"Are  you  sure?"  I  persisted.    "I  want  to  see  her." 

"She  and  Helen  went  out  a  couple  of  hours  ago,"  Mrs. 


JUDITH 

Hargreave  said.  "I  don't  know  where  they  were  going." 
I  thanked  her  and  backed  out.  Through  the  fury  of 
my  impatience  I  was  aware  of  the  suspicion  that  Mrs. 
Hargreave,  also,  had  heard  some  imperfect  or  untrue  re- 
port of  my  interview  with  Helen. 

Pferdminger  had  attended  to  my  fire  while  I  was  out, 
and  the  cheerful  flicker  of  it  made  the  room  appear  more 
than  usually  comfortable  and  inviting.  I  thought  of  Mrs. 
Hargreave  and  wondered  how  far  she  was  affected  by  the 
discomfort  of  her  surroundings.  Hill's  room  was  little 
more  cheerful  than  hers,  except  for  the  companionship  of 
his  books,  and  his  fire  was  always,  it  seemed,  on  the  verge 
of  extinction — my  picture  of  it  was  of  a  sullen  oozing  of 
yellow  smoke  through  a  profoundly  mournful  pile  of  slack. 
But  Hill  professed  to  be  quite  unaffected  by  the  condition 
of  his  fire  or  his  room. 

I  went  over  to  my  board  and  stared  out  of  the  window. 
I  would  not  light  the  gas,  or  my  lamp,  as  they  would  im- 
pair my  sight  of  the  street,  and  I  meant  to  watch  until 
Judith  and  Helen  returned.  My  walk  had  calmed  me.  I 
felt  that  I  could  wait,  now,  with  a  measure  of  self-control. 
The  consciousness  of  tension  had  relaxed  as  I  had  entered 
the  comfort  of  my  room. 


I  dare  say  that  I  had  been  standing  there  twenty  minutes 
or  half  an  hour  when  I  saw  Helen  coming  back  alone.  She 
was  hurrying,  and  she  looked  up  as  she  passed;  I  knew 
that  she  meant  to  come  in  and  see  me.  My  first  feeling 
was  one  of  bitter  disappointment;  but  that  was  succeeded 
by  something  like  relief.  I  should  know  now,  I  supposed, 
what  had  happened,  and  later  I  should  surely  see  Judith. 

I  hurried  to  light  the  two  gas  jets  by  the  window,  but 
left  the  blinds  and  curtains  undrawn.    If  I  were  to  see  Helen 
alone,  again,  I  meant  to  have  a  chaperon.     I  would  take 
the  street  into  my  confidence. 

Helen  came  in  while  I  was  still  lighting  the  gas. 


HOUSE-MATES 

was  panting  and,  after  she  had  defiantly  closed  the  door 
behind  her,  she  stood  just  inside  the  room  with  her  hand 
to  her  side. 

"Well?"  I  said,  echoing  Mrs.  Hargreave's  reception  of  me 
upstairs. 

"You've  won!"  she  said  bitterly.  "I  want  to  know  what 
you're  going  to  do.  Judith  will  be  here  directly.  I — I  gave 
her  the  slip." 

"What  did  you  tell  her  about  last  night?"  I  asked. 
"Pferdminger,  of  course  ...  I  suppose  he  came  to  you 
and  apologised?" 

She  sat  down  on  the  chair  at  the  end  of  the  table,  put 
her  elbows  on  the  cloth  and  propped  her  chin  in  her  hands. 
She  looked  very  weary;  even  the  stimulus  of  her  dislike 
for  me  seemed  to  have  left  her. 

"You  don't  know,"  she  said.  I  do  not  think  she  had 
heard  my  questions.  "And  I  don't  see  why  I  should  tell 
you.  I  don't  want  to  tell  you,  but  if  I  don't,  Judith  will. 
It  has  been  going  on  and  on  all  day.  Hopelessly.  She 
tried  to  believe  me  and  she  couldn't.  She  kept  coming 
back  to  it  and  asking  things." 

She  bent  her  head  and  pushed  her  hair  back  from  her 
forehead  with  a  clumsy  movement  that  made  her  hat  jump 
with  a  grotesque  effort  of  protest.  The  ineptitude  of  her 
attitude  and  gesture  made  me  more  sorry  for  her,  and  yet 
I  could  not  help  thinking  that  if  she  were  on  the  stage,  the 
audience  would  inevitably  have  laughed  at  the  bobbing  of 
that  apparently  resentful  hat. 

"Tried  to  believe  what?"  I  put  in  gently. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  murmured,  still  disregarding  me.  "I 
don't  know  what  I  could  have  done.  Nothing,  I  suppose. 
I  suppose  it  was  hopeless  from  the  first.  I  loathe  men- — all 
men — it  isn't  only  you — all  men  are  exactly  the  same.  I 
wanted  to  save  her,  but  she  can't  understand.  She'll  have 
to  learn  for  herself.  Perhaps  she'll  come  back  to  me  after- 
wards when  she  finds  out."  She  stopped  and  looked  at  me 
and  the  shadows  round  her  eyes  were  ringed  with  stains 
that  showed  purple  through  a  grimy  black. 


JUDITH  24,3 

"You  can't  believe  anything  good  of  me?"  I  asked  feel- 
ing that  I  had  her  attention  at  last. 

"Oh !  good !"  she  sneered.  "I  suppose  you're  good  ac- 
cording to  your  lights ;  a  man's  way  of  being  good;  I  dare 
say  you've  felt  wonderfully  good  since  you've  been  in  love 
with  Judith.  But  what  does  it  come  to?  Nothing.  Of 
course  you  want  her— for  a  time.  I  was  a  silly  fool  to 
think  that  you'd  look  at  me  when  you  hoped  to  get  her. 
I'm  too  plain.  Your  sort  has  no  use  for  plain  women." 

She  was  not  deliberately  trying  to  annoy  me,  but  that 
repetition  of  the  damnable  suggestion  she  had  made  last 
night  roused  me  again.  I  could  not  bear  that  attempt  to 
coarsen  my  adoration  of  Judith.  It  was  an  insult  to  her 
no  less  than  to  me. 

"What's  wrong  with  you?"  I  said.  "Why  do  you  look 
at  everything  from  one  point  of  view  ?  You  can't  be  quite 
sane  on  that  subject." 

She  stared  at  me  in  her  dull,  unseeing  way  and  thrust 
out  her  under  lip  in  an  ugly  sneer.  "I'm  honest,  that's  all," 
she  said. 

"Rot!"  I  returned.    "You're  merely  blind  and  stupid." 

She  gave  a  little  hard  laugh.  "Merely  ugly,"  she  cor- 
rected me.  "That's  my  real  vice." 

I  had  lost  all  sympathy  for  her  at  that  moment.  I  hated 
that  unreasoning  repetition  of  her  obsession.  I  felt  that 
no  one  could  ever  make  her  understand.  She  had  her  one 
horrible  measure  of  men  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  it  was 
the  measure  of  her  own  perverted  mind.  But  what  goaded 
me  to  desperation  was  my  inability,  any  one's  inability, 
to  open  that  viciously  locked  chamber  of  her  understanding. 
I  had  been  willing  to  make  a  thousand  excuses  for  her, 
to  find  fine  qualities  in  her  love  for  Judith ;  but  she  would 
not  grant  me  the  smallest  concession.  If  I  had  been  a 
typical  representative  of  the  woman-hunter  she  had  imag- 
ined me,  surely  there  would  still  have  been  something  in  me 
worthy  of  respect. 

I  made  a  great  effort  of  self-control  as  I  said :  "Well,  I 
don't  know  what  you're  waiting  for.  It's  quite  obvious  that 


244  HOUSE-MATES 

you  loathe  the  sight  of  me.    Why  stay  in  the  same  room 
with  me?" 

"I'm  waiting  for  Judith,"  she  said,  and  then,  with  an 
air  of  gaiety  that  was  quite  a  despicable  piece  of  acting, 
she  went  on :  "You  see,  I  tried  to  make  her  believe  that 
you,  that  I  was  .  .  .  successful  .  .  .  last  night." 

I  went  suddenly  cold  with  horror  when  she  said  that. 
"Good  God!"  I  ejaculated.  "You  dared!" 

She  nodded  furiously  and  I  saw  that  she  was  afraid,  too 
afraid,  to  speak. 

"Oh,  good  God!"  I  repeated  in  complete  disgust,  and 
then :  "t)h !  please  go !  I — I  feel  as  if  I  wanted  to  ... 
to  murder  you !" 

She  stood  up  and  came  towards  me.  "Why  don't  you?" 
she  asked  in  a  strained  voice. 

"You're  not  worth  it,"  I  said. 

"You'd  be  afraid  to  do  that,"  she  taunted  me,  coming 
nearer  still. 

Perhaps  she  hoped,  judging  me  by  the  measure  of  her  own 
hate,  that  I  might  lay  violent  hands  on  her.  But  as  she  came 
within  my  reach,  all  that  was  active  in  my  loathing  of  her 
evaporated.  I  despised  her  weakness.  I  could  no  more  have 
used  violence  to  her  than  I  could  have  physically  ill-treated 
little  Pferdminger. 

I  fell  back  on  my  cliche  of  the  night  before.  "Don't  be 
so  silly,"  I  said  impatiently. 

But  she  still  tried  to  goad  me.  "I  let  her  think  I  was 
successful,"  she  said  and  thrust  her  face  quite  close  to  mine. 

"As  if  you  could  ever  be  successful  in  anything,"  I  re- 
plied brutally. 

She  ought  to  have  thrown  herself  upon  me  for  that  insult; 
but  she  had  no  blaze  in  her.  She  had  patience  and  courage, 
and  an  amazing  persistence,  but  she  was  incapable  of  abso- 
lute frenzy.  I  remember  when  I  went  with  Judith  to  the 
police-court  a  year  or  two  later  and  tried  to  persuade  Helen 
to  let  us  pay  her  fine  that  she  refused  with  all  her  dull,  old 
obstinacy;  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  she  broke  her  windows 
and  went  through  the  hunger-strike  with  the  same  heavy 


JUDITH  245 

resolution.  She  was  not  typical  of  the  average  woman  rebel 
of  that  time. 

And,  now,  my  taunt  did  not  rouse  her  to  fury.  It  hurt 
her,  I  think,  more  than  any  other  thing  I  could  have  said, 
but  she  accepted  it  with  a  brooding  fatalism,  and  cherished  it 
as  another  cause  of  hatred  against  me. 

"Oh !  /  know,  /  know,"  she  said.  "I  care  too  much  about 
things  to  be  successful." 

I  do  not  believe  that  that  was  true. 

Nothing  further  would  have  happened  between  us  if  we 
had  been  left  alone;  we  had  used  up  our  exasperation  for  the 
moment ;  and  as  she  cowered  a  little  away  under  the  sting  of 
my  words,  we  heard  the  click  of  a  latch-key  in  the  front 
door. 


XI 

I  had  a  queer  interval  of  uneasiness  during  the  few  sec- 
onds that  elapsed  between  the  sound  of  Judith's  latch-key 
in  the  lock  and  her  entry  into  the  room.  I  was  not  sure 
what  Helen  would  do.  I  was  overcome  by  a  sudden  fear 
that  she  might  make  another  attempt  to  inculpate  me,  that 
she  might,  perhaps,  cling  to  me  and  play  the  discarded  mis- 
tress. And  I  realised  that  if  she  did  that,  I  should  find  it 
exceedingly  difficult  to  refute  her  charge.  She  would  be 
playing  a  part  and  I  should  be  speaking  the  truth,  but  it 
seemed  to  me  that  her  acting  would  be  far  more  convincing 
than  my  innocence.  Nothing  of  the  kind  happened;  but  I 
am  sure  that  the  idea  presented  itself  to  Helen  and  that  I 
was  in  some  way  aware  of  her  fugitive  intention.  I  can 
very  well  imagine  how  the  impulse  sprang  powerfully  into 
her  mind;  it  may  have  been  inhibited  because  she,  on  her 
part,  became  conscious  that  I  had  read  her  thought. 

My  dread  had  passed  before  Judith  came  in,  but  both 
Helen  and  I  were  still  braced  and  wary. 

Judith  halted  at  the  door  as  if  she  were  surprised  and  a 
shade  uneasy.  I  think  the  first  effect  of  the  antagonism 
she  saw  may  have  suggested  confederacy.  Helen  and  I 


246  HOUSE-MATES 

were  so  tensely  aware  of  each  other.  The  rapport  was  shiv- 
ered as  Judith  spoke,  but  it  had  lasted  quite  long  enough 
for  her  to  have  felt  it. 

"I  want  to  know  the  truth,"  Judith  said,  looking  doubt- 
fully at  Helen. 

I  could  not  respond  to  that  demand.  In  the  first  place  I 
knew  that  I  must  wait  to  hear  what  Helen  would  have  to 
say;  and  in  the  second  I  realised  that  it  would  be  impossi- 
ble for  me  to  give  a  true  account  of  her  pitiful  attempt  to 
compromise  me. 

In  the  interval  of  silence  that  followed,  Judith  closed  the 
door  and  came  up  to  the  table.  She  stood  there  avoiding 
my  eyes  and  staring  with  a  rather  cold  imperiousness  at  her 
friend. 

"Helen!  aren't  you  going  to  answer  me?"  she  said. 

Helen  shivered  and  made  an  odd  sound  in  her  throat, 
that  was  intended,  I  think,  for  a  laugh. 

"Don't  be  so  righteous,  dear,"  she  said  nervously. 

Judith  seemed  to  soften  a  little.  "Will  you  come  up- 
stairs ? '  she  asked. 

I  had  to  intervene  then.  I  saw  that  if  she  had  this 
opportunity,  Helen  would  procrastinate  a  little  longer,  weep 
again,  no  doubt,  and  throw  herself  on  Judith's  pity,  leav- 
ing me  still  to  figure  as  the  villain.  I  could  not  bear  that. 

"Oh!  no,"  I  protested,  "that  isn't  fair.  If  I'm  going  to 
be  attacked,  I  must  have  a  chance  of  defending  myself." 

Judith  would  not  look  at  me,  but  she  admitted  my  pro- 
test by  saying,  "That's  only  fair,  isn't  it,  Helen?" 

"To  him"  Helen  said  savagely.  "You'd  be  fair  to  him; 
why  can't  you  be  fair  to  me?" 

"I  am  being  fair  to  you,"  Judith  returned  gently.  "I'm 
only  asking  you  to  speak  the  truth.  That  can't  be  so  very 
difficult." 

"Yes,  it  is,"  Helen  said.    "It's  impossible  before  him." 

She  was  still  maintaining  her  fiction  by  referring  to  me 
as  "him."  I  might  be  all  that  was  detestable,  but  she  im- 
plied that  I  was  no  longer  a  stranger. 

"Why?"  I  asked  sharply. 


/ 

"I  suppose  you  think  I've  no  self-respect  left,"  she  mur- 
mured. And,  indeed,  the  abandon  of  her  attitude,  the  limp 
relaxation  of  her  shoulders,  the  sulky  droop  of  her  head, 
suggested  that  her  self-respect  was  at  a  very  low  ebb. 

For  a  moment  a  feeling  of  indignant  impatience  nearly 
mastered  me.  I  wanted  to  shake  the  truth  out  of  her;  to 
shake  her  until  she  should  reveal  the  whole  shame  of  her 
present  pose.  For  it  was  this  present  pose  that  angered 
me.  I  was  ready  to  respect  her  for  what  she  had  attempted ; 
but  this  futile  pretending  was  contemptible. 

The  sight  of  Judith  checked  the  irritable  reply  that  I  was 
about  to  make.  I  looked  at  her  and  knew  that  however 
shaken  the  surface  of  her  thought,  she  had  never  truly 
doubted  me. 

"Judith!"  I  said.  I  had  never  before  addressed  her  or 
spoken  of  her  by  Christian  name,  I  was  as  shy  of  it  as  a 
young  wife  of  the  word  "husband" ;  and  my  very  hesitation 
gave  my  utterance  the  quality  of  an  endearment.  I  had 
caressed  that  name  so  often  in  my  thought  that  I  could  not 
speak  it  without  tenderness. 

She  flushed  faintly  but  she  would  not  look  at  me.  She 
wanted  above  all,  just  then,  to  be  fair  to  Helen,  but  her 
desire  was  not  whole-hearted  enough  to  achieve  the  appear- 
ance. 

Helen  turned  her  back  on  us  with  a  disgust  that  was  cer- 
tainly not  assumed. 

"Ah!"  she  ejaculated  on  a  note  of  contempt,  and  then 
she  dropped  into  the  same  chair  in  which  she  had  sat  trem- 
bling last  night,  and  shut  out  the  sight  of  us  with  her  hard 
thin  hands. 

"I  only  want  to  be  fair,"  Judith  repeated  uneasily,  main- 
taining her  unspoken  compact  of  outward  aloofness  from 
me,  although  Helen  was  no  longer  watching  us. 

Helen  made  no  reply  and  I  could  think  of  no  appropriate 
way  to  break  a  silence  that  seemed  likely  to  hold  us  inter- 
minably. The  clatter  of  a  heavy  van  passing  up  the  street 
was  a  welcome  distraction,  but  as  the  sound  of  it  slowly 
merged  into  the  murmur  of  the  traffic  in  the  Tottenham 


248  HOUSE-MATES 

Court  Road,  the  stillness  of  the  room  was  disquietingly  in- 
tensified. 

Judith  felt  it  no  less  than  I  did  and  her  apprehension  was 
greater  than  mine  inasmuch  as  she  foresaw  the  outburst 
that  was  coming. 

"Helen!"  she  said  imperatively,  challenging  the  expected 
storm. 

Helen  dropped  her  hands,  but  she  looked  at  neither  of  us 
as  she  said, 

"Oh!  what's  the  good?     You'll  never  believe  me" 

"That's  absurd,"  Judith  replied  coldly.  "Haven't  I  always 
believed  you?" 

"Until  he  came,"  Helen  said.  And  the  high  light  of  my 
two  gas  burners  intensified  the  rusty  shadows  about  her 
eyes  so  that  they  loomed  like  empty  hollows. 

Judith  hardened  herself.  I  supposed  she  knew  that  Helen 
had  changed  her  tactics,  that  she  had  lost  all  hope,  and 
meant,  now,  to  wound — bitterly  if  she  were  able. 

"That's  nonsense,"  Judith  said. 

"Is  it?"  Helen  replied.  "You've  forgotten  our  first  quar- 
rel, of  course — after  he  had  insulted  you  on  the  door- 
step? When  you  talked  such  a  lot  of  nonsense  about  .  .  . 
Freedom."  She  spat  out  the  last  word  as  if  it  offended  her. 

"It  wasn't  the  first  time  I  had  talked  about  Freedom," 
Judith  returned  without  heat.  "And  you  encouraged  it  as 
long  as  it  meant  agreeing  with  you." 

"As  long  as  it  meant  Freedom,"  Helen  said.  "There's  a 
difference  between  freedom  and  license!' 

The  colour  was  mounting  steadily  in  Judith's  cheeks  until 
at  last  it  burned  as  if  she  were  facing  the  glow  of  a  clear 
fire,  but  she  did  not  raise  her  voice,  nor  give  any  other 
sign  of  her  hurt. 

"I  said  what  I'd  always  said,"  she  replied.  "It  was  only 
when  I  really  wanted  independence  that  you  turned  round 
on  me.  But  surely  we  needn't  go  into  all  that  again."  And 
the  touch  of  weariness  in  her  voice  told  me  how  long  they 
had  argued  without  daring  to  touch  the  vital  application 
which  Helen,  at  least,  intended  to  avoid  no  longer. 


JUDITH  24,9 

"Oh !  no,  we  needn't,"  she  said ;  "not  all  that !  we  can 
speak  out,  now.  At  all  events  I  can.  We  can  stop  pre- 
tending about  Freedom.  All  it  means  is  that  I've  served 
your  purpose  and  now  you  want  to  be  rid  of  me.  We've 
both  made  a  mistake.  I  thought  you  were  different  to  other 
women,  but  you're  not.  You've  got  just  the  same  kind  of 
silly  romantic  ideas  about  men  that  they  all  have.  It's  no 
use  our  playing  at  being  friends  any  more.  .  .  ." 

"I  don't  think  it  is,"  Judith  put  in  quietly. 

"I  shocked  you,  I  suppose,"  Helen  returned  with  a  spurt 
of  temper.  "You  think  it  was  a  horrible  unfeminine  thing 
to  do  what  I  did  last  night.  Well,  I  don't.  It  wasn't  done 
for  my  own  gratification,  you  may  be  quite  sure  of  that.  I 
did  it  to  save  you,  and  you  weren't  worth  it.  Even  if  I'd 
succeeded,  I  daresay  it  wouldn't  have  made  any  difference  to 
you."  She  stopped  abruptly,  suddenly  aware,  perhaps,  that 
she  had  acknowledged  her  failure. 

The  flush  had  died  from  Judith's  face  and  left  it  very 
white  and  cold.  The  horrible  suggestion  of  Helen's  last 
taunt  had  finally  destroyed  any  chance  of  real  forgiveness. 

And  there  came  to  me  a  vivid  recollection  of  the  scene 
with  Rose  Whiting  a  few  months  earlier.  I  saw  in  Helen, 
now,  the  same  abandonment,  the  same  stripping  off  of  a 
conventional  disguise  that  I  had  shrunk  from  on  that  night 
when  I  first  entered  the  life  of  the  house.  Helen,  too,  had 
touched  some  absolute,  but  it  was  no  longer  so  repulsive  to 
me.  I  saw  her  naked  soul,  and  it  seemed  to  me  wounded 
and  bitter  and  prejudiced;  but  she  had  loved  with  all  her 
being,  and  only  some  mis  judgment,  some  feeble  narrowness 
of  interest,  had  marred  the  quality  of  her  devotion. 

"Oh !  why  do  you  say  these  things  ?"  I  asked  on  the  im- 
pulse of  the  moment. 

She  turned  her  head  towards  me  with  a  quick  movement 
of  surprise. 

"Judith  wanted  to  have  the  truth,"  she  said. 

"Of  course  you  can't  understand,"  Judith  put  in. 

"Oh!  I  do;  I  do,"  Helen  said,  but  all  the  spirit  had  gone 
out  of  her.  She  stood  up  and  hesitated  as  if  she  contem- 


250  HOUSE-MATES 

plated  some  final  outburst  that  would  leave  her  with  the 
show  of  victory;  and  then,  with  a  long  sigh,  walked  across 
to  the  door  and  went  out  without  another  glance  at  either 
of  us.  But  the  artificial  exaggeration  of  her  feebleness,  her 
clutch  at  the  table  as  she  passed,  her  gesture  in  seizing  the 
door-handle,  disguised  and  spoiled  the  effect  of  her  tragedy. 


XII 

"I  hate  the  stage,"  Judith  said.  She  had  sat  down  by  the 
table,  but  she  had  not  yet  looked  at  me. 

"Are  you  going  to  give  it  up?"  I  asked. 

She  nodded  emphatically.  "I've  been  thinking  of  going 
back  to  Cheltenham,"  she  said,  as  if  she  were  laying  the 
plan  before  me  for  consideration. 

"But  could  you  bear  that  life  again?"  I  asked. 

"No,  not  the  same  life,"  she  said  definitely.  "But  it 
wouldn't  be  the  same.  I  should  go  back — on  conditions. 
They  would  have  to  give  me  my  Freedom  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent. I  am  independent  of  them,  financially.  I  haven't  got 
very  much,  but  it's  enough  to  keep  me." 

I  weighed  that  for  a  moment.  I  had  formed  a  mental 
picture  of  her  two  aunts,  and  I  saw  Judith  in  relation  to 
them,  much  as  I  see  in  imagination  the  completed  build- 
ings I  design  in  two  dimensions. 

"Wouldn't  it  mean — constant  friction?"  I  asked. 

"They'd  never  alter  their  opinions,  of  course,"  she  said. 

"And  you  wouldn't  alter  yours?" 

"I  have  altered  them  a  good  deal  since  I've  been  here." 

"About  them  ?    About  your  aunts  ?" 

"Yes.  I'm  sorry  for  them,  now.  I  used  to  be  always 
criticising  them ;  hating  them  for  being  so  narrow.  I  thought 
all  those  Cheltenham  people  were  just  blind  and  stupid." 

"Aren't  they?"  I  asked. 

She  began  a  little  nervous  smoothing  of  the  table-cloth 
with  her  hands.  "They're  so  convinced  that  they  are  right," 
she  said,  "and  so  was  I  and  so  is  Helen  and  Mrs.  Hargreave 


JUDITH  g51 

and  pretty  nearly  everybody.  I  don't  see  why  I  should 
criticise  them,  my  aunts  I  mean,  and  their  friends,  any  more 
than  I  should  criticise  Helen." 

"But  you  do  criticise  her,  now,  don't  you?"  I  suggested. 

"Yes,  I  do,"  she  agreed,  "but  I  used  not  to.  I  thought 
she  was  almost  perfect.  So  don't  you  see,  I  feel  a  little  lost, 
now,  and  it  seems  as  if  I  might  just  as  well  go  back  as  try 
to  find  some  one  else,  and  then,  come  to — to  criticise  them, 
too." 

I  saw,  then,  the  direction  in  which  we  were  moving. 

In  all  that  conversation  with  Helen,  the  quality  of  Judith's 
feeling  for  me  had  been  almost  explicit.  I  had  grasped  what 
appeared  to  be  the  realisation  of  all  that  I  had  dared  to 
hope.  In  a  way  I  had  never  doubted  Judith  since  we  had 
made  that  journey  to  Hampstead.  Moving  in  our  tem- 
porarily parallel  paths,  we  were  so  aware  of  each  other  that 
I  was  sure  we  must  inevitably  draw  together.  And  when 
none  of  Helen's  definite  implications  was  denied,  I  had  re- 
ceived what  I  took  to  be  final,  incontrovertible  proof.  We 
had  declared  ourselves  through  an  intermediary  none  the 
less  definitely  because  our  admissions  had  all  been  tacit ;  and 
when  we  were  left  alone,  I  had  felt  as  if  our  agreement 
were  ratified  and  needed  only  the  seal. 

Now,  she  had  terrified  me  with  a  new  fear ;  the  fear  that 
she  had  come  to  doubt  herself.  I  plunged  desperately. 

"Do  you  mean  me?"  I  asked. 

"I  suppose  so,"  she  said,  almost  whispering. 

"Do  you — do  you  criticise  me,  now  ?"  I  said. 

She  did  not  answer  that  directly.  "I've  been  so — shaken 
by  all  this,"  she  explained  in  the  same  low,  confessional 
voice.  "I  feel  that  I  can't  be  sure  of  anything  again.  I 
should  so  like  ...  in  a  way  ...  to  be  friends  with  every- 
body ;  and  that  doesn't  seem  possible.  I'm  afraid  there  must 
be  something  wrong  with  me." 

I  checked  myself  on  the  verge  of  beginning  an  absurdly 
rational  argument,  to  prove  that  her  fear  was  the  result  of 
a  passing  emotion.  I  was  slipping  into  the  old  duality, 


252  HOUSE-MATES 

standing  aside  and  advising  myself ;  and  I  made  an  effort  to 
win  my  integrity. 

"Judith !"  I  said,  and  the  sound  of  my  voice  compelled  her 
at  last  to  look  at  me,  so  that  I  saw  those  depths  in  her  eyes 
which  she  had  tried  so  long  to  hide. 

"It  may  be  only  another  mistake,"  she  said. 

"You  know  it  isn't,"  I  answered  with  the  confidence  of 
my  single  mind. 

I  took  a  step  towards  her,  but  she  held  up  her  hands. 
"No,  not  yet,"  she  protested.  "I  must  wait.  I  must  think. 
I  want  to  go  back  to  Cheltenham  for  a  time — to  think." 

"Are  you  afraid  of  losing  your  Freedom?"  I  asked. 

"No,  it  isn't  that,"  she  said.  "I  know  you  wouldn't  bully 
me  and — and  tie  me  in,  as  my  aunts  did  and  as  Helen  tried 
to  do,  too.  You  wouldn't,  would  you?" 

The  thought  of  bullying  her  or  interfering  with  her  free- 
dom appeared  so  absurd  to  me  that  I  could  find  no  words 
to  ridicule  the  suggestion. 

"Oh!  I  know  you  wouldn't,"  she  went  on,  "because  I'm 
sure  we — we  think  alike  about  so  many  things.  About  the 
stage,  for  instance.  I  knew  you  hated  that,  always,  and 
now  I  hate  it,  too."  She  was  a  little  breathless  as  if  she 
were  hurrying  eagerly  on  to  make  some  important  statement 
before  she  was  interrupted;  and  yet,  when  I  waited  at  her 
pause,  she  found  nothing  more  to  say. 

"If  you  go  back  to  Cheltenham,"  I  began  again  after  a 
short  interval  of  silence,  "you  would  let  me  write  to  you?" 

"Oh!  yes,"  she  said. 

"And  you  would  write  to  me?" 

She  nodded. 

"And  we  ...  there  would  be  some  kind  of  understand- 
ing that  if  ..." 

"I  only  want  to  be  quite  sure,"  she  said.  And  then,  as 
if  she  had  found  her  statement,  she  continued  more  quickly: 
"This  place  has  influenced  me  so.  I  feel  as  if  I  couldn't  trust 
myself  here;  as  if  all  that  has  happened  here  couldn't  be 
quite  true.  It  was  such  a  change  to  me.  Everything  is  so 
different.  I  used  to  be  uncomfortable,  at  first  whenever  I 


JUDITH  253 

went  to  Mr.  Hill's  room  with  Helen.  And  I  want  to  look 
back  on  it  all — from  Cheltenham  before  I  ...  you  see,  you 
are  so  mixed  up  with  it.  The  only  time  I've  seen  you  away 
from  this  house  was  when  we  went  to  Hampstead.  .  .  ." 

"And  then?"  I  put  in. 

She  stood  up  and  held  out  her  hands  to  me.  "I  do  know," 
she  said,  "but  you  must  let  me  go  back  to  Cheltenham  for  a 
time." 

I  drew  her  towards  me  and  she  offered  but  the  gentlest  re- 
sistance. 

I  wanted  to  hold  her  there,  on  and  on,  for  ever.  Her  kiss 
had  been  such  peace  and  gladness,  the  fulfilment  of  all  my 
knowledge  that  she  and  I  had  loved  one  another  from  the 
beginning.  But  she  recovered  her  consciousness  of  place 
and  time  while  I  was  still  lost  to  all  sense  of  anything  but 
her  wonderful  presence. 

"All  your  curtains  are  open,  and  we  are  standing  in  the 
full  light  of  the  window,"  she  reminded  me. 

"I  had  forgotten  that  there  were  other  people  in  the 
world,"  I  said. 

XIII 

She  was  to  go  to  Cheltenham  as  soon  as  she  had  heard 
from  her  aunts. 

She  was  not  sure  whether  they  would  want  her  to  come 
back  to  them. 

Unhappily  for  me,  they  displayed  no  sign  of  hesitation. 
Judith  showed  me  their  letter,  and  through  the  genteel  pre- 
cisions of  their  phraseology,  I  could  read  an  expression  of 
relief  that  was  not  quite  free  from  an  undercurrent  of 
triumph. 


XI 
POOR  OLD  MEARES 


AFTER  Judith  had  gone,  I  settled  down  to  begin  life. 
She  had  maintained  her  resolution,  but  for  one  mo- 
ment,  on   Paddington   Station,   her   intention   was  nearly 
broken. 

She  had  staked  a  claim  to  her  seat  in  the  train  by  the 
usual  depositing  of  impedimenta,  and  we  had  walked  to  the 
far  end  of  the  platform,  talking  a  little  aimlessly  as  people  do 
in  those  circumstances ;  when  there  is  no  time  to  begin  and, 
in  our  case,  a  steady  realisation  that  all  life  is  a  beginning. 

We  had  come  to  a  silence  as  we  stood  at  the  extreme  of 
that  slender  peninsula  which,  ahead  of  us,  now  sloped 
swiftly  down  into  the  dangerous  currents  of  sweeping  tan- 
gled lines  all  leading  out  to  the  great  west  country  that  was 
yet  quite  unknown  to  me. 

"I  should  love  to  take  you  to  Wales,"  Judith  said  sud- 
denly, answering  my  thought,  "not  Barmouth,  but  all  that 
coast." 

"I  wonder  why  you  are  going  alone  ?"  I  said. 

"I  must,"  she  replied  at  once,  as  if  we  were  continuing 
an  old  conversation;  although  I,  at  least,  had  never  until 
then  questioned  the  inevitability  of  her  going. 

"Why  are  you  going,  really?"  I  asked.  "Why  shouldn't 
we  be  married  and  go  together  ?" 

And  just  for  one  moment  her  intuitive  purpose  was  nearly 
broken  by  my  rationalism. 

But  I  pressed  my  advantage  too  logically.  "Is  there  any 
sensible,  valid  reason  why  we  shouldn't  be  married  at  once  ?" 

254 


POOR  OLD  MEARES  255 

I  went  on.  "If  you  can  give  me  one,  I'll  be  satisfied,  but  for 
the  life  of  me  /  can't  think  of  any." 

"I  dare  say  not.  I  don't  know  any  reason,"  she  said  un- 
derlining her  last  word,  "but  I  must  go,  all  the  same." 

"Isn't  it  only  because  you  can't  get  rid  of  the  idea  that 
you  are  going?"  I  protested. 

"I  want  to  go,"  she  said,  and  that  assertion  would  have 
been  final  even  if  we  had  not  been  startled  by  what  seemed 
like  a  distant  firing  of  rapid,  consecutive  shots. 

"They're  shutting  the  doors,"  Judith  said  with  an  air  of 
positive  alarm.  "Oh !  come ;  we  must  run." 

And  I  ran  with  her  as  if  the  catching  of  that  train  was 
a  matter  of  the  last  importance.  .  .  . 

I  remember  speculating  that  same  afternoon  on  the  sub- 
ject of  fate ;  I  did  not  figure  Fate  as  the  awful,  threatening 
figure  of  Greek  tragedy  but  as  the  equally  inscrutable  influ- 
ence that  tweaks  some  unapprehended  control  at  apparently 
trivial  moments,  and  alters  the  whole  circumstance  of  our 
lives.  My  instances  were  recalled  from  any  examples  I 
could  trace  in  my  own  history;  and  then  I  looked  forward 
with  a  recognisable  shade  of  apprehension  to  the  conse- 
quences that  might  follow  the  failure  of  my  parting  attempt 
to  dissuade  Judith  from  going  to  Cheltenham. 

For  I  knew,  then,  vaguely  that  if  I  had  held  her,  instead 
of  attempting  to  reason  with  her,  she  would  have  stayed  in 
London  and  married  me.  She  would  have  done  it  despite 
her  instinctive  wish  to  return  to  Cheltenham,  and  I  can  see 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  she  would  have  regretted  her  de- 
cision later.  But,  no!  at  that  critical  instant  my  controls 
were  tampered  with.  I  cannot  say  why  I  took  a  bad  line 
instead  of  a  good  one ;  the  choice  seems  to  have  been  purely 
haphazard ;  and  yet  Judith  and  I  had  to  suffer  six  months' 
separation  because  of  that  accident.  We  may  have  a  meas- 
ure of  free-will,  but  I  am  sure  that  we  are  subject  to  the 
queerest  kind  of  interference.  .  .  . 

Judith  had  intended  to  stay  with -her  aunts  for  a  month  at 
longest,  but  the  fate  that  had  determined  her  going,  kept  her 
there  for  half  a  year. 


256  HOUSE-MATES 


II 

And  she  had  left  me  to  face,  although  I  had  no  appre- 
hension of  its  coming,  the  darkest,  most  despairing  period 
of  my  life.  It  is  true  that  I  was  subject,  during  the  first 
months  of  Judith's  absence,  to  fits  of  doubt  and  gloom  but 
they  were  all  attributable  to  my  loss  of  her,  and  not  to  any 
prescience  of  coming  trouble. 

Once  or  twice  in  February  I  seriously  contemplated  the 
thought  of  a  trip  to  Cheltenham,  and  denied  myself  solely 
because  I  counted  so  surely  on  her  return  at  the  beginning 
of  March.  Later  there  were  reasons  why  such  an  excursion 
was  inadvisable.  My  feeling  of  desertion  was  not,  I  think, 
quite  normal.  I  only  realised  when  I  was  left  alone  how  per- 
petually conscious  I  had  been  of  Judith's  presence  in  the 
house.  I  wrote  to  her  every  day. 

My  misfortunes  began  in  the  first  week  of  March,  with 
the  announcement  that  the  elder  of  Judith's  two  aunts  had 
had  a  paralytic  stroke  and  that  Judith  herself  would  cer- 
tainly have  to  stay  in  Cheltenham  for  some  weeks  longer. 
I  could  not  protest  against  that  decision.  We  were  in  the 
power  of  the  great  Autocrat;  and  although  Judith's  ser- 
vices might  be  useless,  she  was  bound  to  offer  them.  We 
had  to  pay  the  tribute  of  our  youth  towards  maintaining  the 
old. 

On  the  same  day  that  I  received  the  depressing  news  con- 
tained in  Judith's  letter,  I  learnt  that  I  had  not  been  placed 
in  the  competition  I  had  been  working  on  all  through  the 
autumn.  I  was  neither  surprised  nor,  in  a  sense,  disap- 
pointed; I  had  foreseen  that  probability  and  my  study  of 
the  winning  plans  reproduced  in  The  Building  News,  a 
few  days  later,  finally  convinced  me  that  my  own  were 
very  inferior.  Nevertheless,  the  knowledge  that  I  had  failed 
did  not  tend  to  raise  my  spirits. 

I  had  begun  to  realise,  by  then,  that  the  prospects  of  my 
professional  career  were  not  looking  particularly  bright, 
and  that  unless  I  achieved  some  success  either  by  winning 


POOR  OLD  MEARES  257 

a  competition  or  getting  work  by  private  influence,  I  might 
be  reduced  very  soon  to  seeking  a  job  in  an  office  at  a  salary 
which  certainly  would  not  exceed  four  pounds  a  week.  I 
loathed  the  thought  of  that  return  to  slavery,  of  the  eter- 
nal, mechanical  delineation  of  another  man's  designs;  but 
I  loathed  even  more  the  prospect  of  returning  to  Ken  Lodge 
and  attempting  to  conciliate  my  uncle. /  Perhaps,  I  was  a 
little  prejudiced;  too  proud  of  my  independence  and  my 
break  with  the  respectable  tradition  of  my  youth;  but  my 
chief  reason  for  dreading  any  approach  to  my  uncle  was 
the  certainty  I  had  that  I  should  be  rebuffed.  I  could  only 
picture  my  uncle  as  I  had  last  seen  him,  an  irrevocably 
offended  man. 

It  was  somewhere  about  the  middle  of  March,  ten  days  or 
so  after  I  had  known  that  there  was  no  hope  of  seeing 
Judith  again  for  many  weeks,  that  the  next  and  most  seri- 
ous blow  fell. 

in 

I  was  working  at  my  window  about  four  o'clock,  getting 
my  next  competition  drawings  into  final  shape,  when  I 
saw  Mrs.  Meares  come  back.  She  had  gone  out  with  her 
husband  an  hour  or  two  earlier,  and  I  had  thought  they 
looked  very  bright  and  cheerful.  They  had  looked  up  at 
me  and  waved,  and  Mrs.  Meares  had  called  out  something 
to  the  effect  that  I  worked  too  hard.  Now,  she  was  the 
figure  of  despair.  She  was  holding  her  handkerchief  to 
her  face  and  her  head  drooped  as  if  she  could  not  endure 
any  one  to  see  her. 

I  had  that  instant  sense  of  calamity  which  is  so  unmis- 
takable. I  had  no  thought  that  it  might  affect  me  save 
through  my  sympathies,  but  I  felt  a  cold  wave  of  appre- 
hension creep  through  me  like  a  physical  fear, 
quickly  out  in  to  the  hall  and  opened  the  door  for  her.  She 
was  fumbling  blindly  with  her  latch-key. 

I  think  she  deliberately  pretended  not  to  recognise  me  at 
first,  hoping,  perhaps,  that  I  should  ask  no  questions  and 


258  HOUSE-MATES 

let  her  go  up  and  hide  herself  in  her  own  room.  But  my 
tact  failed  me. 

"Has  anything  happened  ?"  I  asked.    "An  accident.  .  .  .  ?" 

"Can't  tell  you — now,"  and  something  that  sounded  like 
"thought  we  were  so  safe,"  was  all  I  could  understand  of 
her  reply,  and  the  last  word  came  with  a  tremendous  gulp 
and  a  fresh  burst  of  tears.  She  ran  up  to  their  rooms  on 
the  second  floor,  fairly  whooping  with  misery. 

I  said  nothing  to  any  one  that  evening.  She  had  made  it 
quite  plain  that  she  wanted  to  be  left  alone.  But  I  will  con- 
fess that  through  my  sympathy  for  her  trouble,  whatever  it 
might  be,  a  distinctly  apprehensive  curiosity  began  to  peer 
more  and  more  forbiddingly.  If  anything  serious  had  hap- 
pened to  Meares,  my  £250  might  be  in  jeopardy.  And  I 
had  reluctantly  come  to  the  conclusion  a  day  or  two  be- 
fore, that  I  must  take  advantage  of  his  offer,  and  ask  him 
to  return  me  a  part,  at  least,  of  my  over-rash  investment. 

I  had  to  sleep  with  that  curiosity  still  unsatisfied;  and  I 
remember  that  I  did  not  accept  as  a  good  omen  the  very 
vivid  dream  I  had  that  night  of  winning  my  competition. 
Meares  was  connected  with  it  in  some  vague  way.  I  fancy 
that  he  was,  ridiculously,  both  the  assessor  and  the  build- 
ing contractor. 

I  went  up  to  Hill's  room  directly  after  breakfast,  hoping 
that  he  would  be  able  to  relieve  my  suspense,  but  he  had 
neither  seen  nor  heard  anything  of  either  Meares  or  his 
wife.  I  was  not  sure,  then,  whether  or  not  Meares,  himself, 
had  returned  to  Keppel  Street;  and  I  decided  to  make  an 
early  call  on  him  with  the  ostensible  purpose  of  asking 
whether  he  could  conveniently  return  me  any  part  of  my 
£250.  Hill's  manner  had  done  nothing  to  relieve  my 
anxiety.  He  made  no  reference  to  his  earlier  doubt  of  the 
Meares,  but  he  looked  distressed  and  uneasy.  I  wondered 
if  he,  too,  had  put  something  in  the  Australian  mine.  I 
had  never  mentioned  my  own  plunge  to  him  and  said  noth- 
ing then;  partly  because  I  was  ashamed  of  my  own  in- 
genuousness, and  partly  because  the  admission  would  sound 
like  a  direct  charge  against  Meares. 


POOR  OLD  ME  ARES  259 

I  received  no  answer  to  my  knock  on  the  Meares's  door, 
and  after  a  little  hesitation  I  opened  the  door  and  looked 
into  the  sitting-room.  No  one  was  there,  but  I  heard  Mrs. 
Meares's  voice  calling  out  an  enquiry  from  the  bedroom. 

"Is  Mr.  Meares  in?"  I  asked,  and  then  had  to  repeat  my 
question  in  a  louder  voice. 

"Is  that  Mr.  Hornby?"  was  the  answer  I  received  and 
the  bedroom  door  was  opened  about  an  inch  to  facilitate 
our  conversation. 

"I've  been  lazy  this  morning,"  Mrs.  Meares's  voice  con- 
tinued, much  in  her  ordinary  tone.  "Meares  has  gone  to 
see  some  friends.  I'll  tell  him  you  want  to  see  him  when 
he — comes  in." 

"Oh !  thanks  very  much.  It  isn't  important,"  I  said,  and  I 
was  going  out  when  Mrs.  Meares  called  after  me  to  ask  if 
Hill  was  in. 

"Yes,  I've  just  seen  him,"  I  told  her. 

"I — I'd  like  to  see  him,  too,  before  I  go  out,"  Mrs. 
Meares  replied.  "Could  you  tell  him?" 

"Now;  at  once?"  I  asked.    "Down  here?" 

"In  five  minutes,"  she  said.  .  .  . 

"All  right,"  Hill  replied  briefly  when  I  gave  him  the 
message. 

"I'll  see  you  afterwards,"  he  added,  as  I  still  stood  wait- 
ing in  the  doorway. 

"Yes,  I  should  like  to  know,"  I  said,  and  perhaps  the 
tone  of  my  voice  confirmed  the  suspicion  he  had  already 
formed. 

"Have  you  got  any  money  in  his  scheme  ?"  he  asked. 

"Oh !  a  bit,"  I  returned. 

"I  see,"  commented  Hill,  thoughtfully.  "I  suppose  that  s 
why  she'd  prefer  to  see  me." 

I  went  downstairs  prepared  for  the  worst. 
lost  every  feeling  of  sympathy  for  Meares  by  that  time. 
I  concluded,  very  naturally,  that  he  had  absconded  wit 
all  the  money  he  had  been  able  to  collect,  and  had 
his  wife  alone  to  face  the  music. 

I  heard  two  people  coming  downstairs  about  half  an 


260  HOUSE-MATES 

later  and  then  Hill  came  into  my  room,  and  I  heard  Mrs. 
Meares  go  out  by  the  front  door. 

Hill  looked  at  me  thoughtfully  for  a  moment  before  he 
spoke,  and  then  he  said : 

"They've  had  the  most  infernally  bad  luck." 

"They?"  I  remarked.     "He  hasn't  done  a  bunk,  then?" 

"Meares !"  Hill  said.  "Good  Lord,  no.  Surely  you  didn't 
think  he  was  that  kind  of  chap?"  His  tone  rebuked  me 
for  my  suspicion. 

"Well,  no,  I  didn't,"  I  admitted ;  "but  I  thought  it  looked 
a  bit  fishy  this  morning." 

"Oh !  Lord,  no,"  Hill  repeated,  without  noticing  my  reply. 
"Poor  old  Meares  isn't  that  sort." 

"What's  the  trouble  then?"  I  asked. 

"I.  D.  B'ing  in  Cape  Town,"  Hill  said. 

I 'had  not  the  remotest  idea  what  he  meant. 

"Illicit  Diamond  Buying,"  he  explained.  "They've  got  a 
law  out  there  to  stop  any  private  traffic  in  diamonds.  It 
was  passed  to  prevent  stealing  from  the  mines,  of  course. 
You  may  search  a  Kaffir  for  a  month  without  finding  the 
diamond  he's  got  on  him.  I'm  told  they  swallow  them,  and 
manage  to  effect  a  recovery  later.  In  effect,  you  see,  any 
unauthorised  seller  of  diamonds  is  convicted  of  trying  to 
dispose  of  stolen  goods — but  there  are  people  like  Meares 
who  get  let  in  with  the  very  best  intentions.  When  a  per- 
fectly decent  fellow  comes  to  you  and  offers  you  a  dia- 
mond at  about  half  what's  it's  worth,  you  don't  feel  as  if 
you  were  committing  any  awful  crime  by  buying  it.  It's 
just  a  lark." 

"Well,  what  can  they  do  to  him?"  I  asked. 

"He'll  be  up  at  Bow  Street  this  morning,"  Hill  said.  "I 
gather  it's  a  clear  case,  and  in  fact,  I  don't  fancy  he'll  put 
up  any  defence  over  here — waste  of  time  and  money." 

"Over  here?"  I  put  in.  "Then  will  they  send  him  back 
to  South  Africa?" 

Hill  nodded.  "Yes,  they'll  try  him  over  there,"  he 
said. 

"Is  he  absolutely  broke?"  I  asked. 


POOR  OLD  MEARES  261 

"They're  down  to  about  thirty  pounds,  I  believe,"  Hill 
said;  and  he  looked  at  me  rather  keenly  as  he  went  on. 
"All  this  money  he's  been  trying  to  raise  has  been  promised, 
you  know ;  none  of  it  has  been  paid  over." 

I  turned  away  to  the  window  to  hide  the  evidences  of 
my  indecision.  I  could  not  make  up  my  mind  whether  to 
tell  Hill  about  that  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  of  mine. 
I  inferred  that  he  had  misunderstood  my  admission  of  be- 
ing committed ;  and  it  seemed  fairly  certain  that  my  money 
had  already  been  spent. 

But  Hill's  next  question  showed  that  he  suspected  the 
cause  of  my  earlier  anxiety  and  my  present  embarrass- 
ment. 

"I  say,  Hornby,  you  haven't  been  lending  them  money, 
have  you?"  he  asked. 

"In  a  way,"  I  admitted. 

"I  fancied  there  was  something,"  he  remarked.  "The 
little  Meares  woman  seemed  to  be  hiding  something  all  the 
time." 

"Oh!  well,"  I  said.  "I  suppose  he'll  get  bail.  I  shall 
probably  see  him  this  evening." 

But  I  never  saw  either  of  the  Meares  again. 


IV 

I  went  to  a  theatre  that  evening ;  I  was  sick  of  my  own 
company  and  wanted  a  little  relaxation;  and  while  I  was 
out  Mrs.  Meares  came  back  to  Keppel  Street,  paid  all  Pferd- 
minger's  claims  without  demur,  and  took  away  her  own 
and  her  husband's  luggage  in  a  cab. 

I  have  often  wondered  since  whether  she  would  have 
made  a  clean  breast  of  everything  to  me,  if  I  had  been  in  ? 
She  could  not  possibly  have  known  that  I  should  not  be 
there,  and  I  think  she  must  have  come  prepared  to  throw 
herself  on  my  mercy;  and  then  finding  the  way  .clear,  suc- 
cumbed to  the  temptation  of  taking  what  seemed  to  her  no 
doubt  the  safer  road  of  a  silent  disappearance. 


262  HOUSE-MATES 

The  letter  I  received  from  her  a  month  later,  dated  South- 
ampton and  posted  at  Las  Palmas,  left  much  unaccounted 
for,  but  to  my  mind  it  completely  absolved  her. 

"Dear  Mr.  Hornby,"  she  wrote, 

"I  suppose  you  have  got  to  think  the  worst  of  us  so  it  is 
no  use  me  trying  to  explain  what  I  can't  expect  you  will 
believe.  All  the  same  I  want  you  to  know  that  Meares 
never  used  your  money,  and  asked  me  to  give  it  back  to 
you  when  I  saw  him  before  the  trial  at  Bow  Street.  Well, 
I  did  not,  so  you  have  got  to  blame  me  and  not  him.  If  I 
had  not  taken  that  we  should  have  stepped  off  the  boat  at 
Cape  Town  without  a  penny  in  our  pockets. 

"Yours  very  truly, 

"EVELINA  MASON." 

Mason  was  their  right  name,  and  perhaps  her  reference 
to  their  alias  in  the  body  of  the  letter  slipped  in  by  acci- 
dent 

I  was  glad  to  have  that  letter  and  if  she  had  given  me  any 
address  I  should  have  written  to  her  and  wished  them  both 
good  luck. 

I  believe,  and  so  does  Hill,  that  Meares  was  an  honest 
man,  according  to  his  lights ;  and  as  for  his  valiant,  faithful, 
little  wife,  no  one,  I  think,  would  blame  her  for  what  she 
did. 

I  am  afraid  that  they  failed  to  "make  good"  after  he  was 
released — I  learnt  from  Hill  that  he  received  a  sentence  of 
twelve  months  imprisonment  I  feel  sure  that  they  would 
have  repaid  me  that  £250,  even  after  the  lapse  of  years,  if 
they  had  even  had  any  money  to  spare. 


I  told  Judith  nothing  about  my  lost  capital  when  I  wrote 
to  her.  We  had  never  discussed  my  affairs — indeed,  we 
had  never  discussed  anything,  and  yet  our  letters  show 


POOR  OLD  MEARES  263 

how  decisively  we  understood  each  other.  My  reserve  in 
this  particular  was  due  to  the  sense  I  had  of  my  inability 
to  justify  the  Meares  for  keeping  that  confounded  money 
of  mine;  and  when  that  was  explained,  I  did  not  want  to 
reopen  the  subject.  Judith  was  so  distressed  about  them 
both;  so  fervent  in  her  condemnation  of  the  "stupid  laws" 
that  had  made  Meares  an  almost  innocent  victim.  She 
agreed  with  me  that  his  offence  must  have  been  peculiarly 
artless.  And  I  decided  to  leave  her  loyalty  undisturbed  un- 
til I  could  explain  everything  to  her  in  conversation. 

Judith's  letters  were  a  great  consolation  to  me  during 
that  spring  and  summer.  They  had  that  quality  of  "steadi- 
ness" which  I  have  so  often  referred  to  in  speaking  of  her. 
I  did  not  tell  her  quite  the  worst  of  my  news  with  regard 
to  my  circumstances,  but  she  knew  enough  to  help  me  by 
her  expression  of  complete  confidence  in  our  future. 

(I  have  kept  all  those  letters  of  hers,  but  I  cannot  quote 
from  them  here.  They  were  not  in  the  strictest  sense  love- 
letters,  but  they  convey  a  kind  of  intimacy  which  I  shrink 
from  displaying.  And  I  know  that  all  I  have  written  about 
her  is  incomplete  and  unsatisfactory  by  reason  of  that  hesi- 
tation of  mine  whenever  I  come  to  attempt  any  description 
of  her  real  personality.  I  must  admit  that  the  thing  does 
not  seem  to  me  possible.  The  touches  that  might  present 
her,  all  seem  to  me  to  come  too  near  some  personal  rela- 
tion between  us  that  is  too  sacred  for  this  advertisement  of 
writing.  Even  though  I  were  sure  that  nobody  except 
Judith  and  myself  would  ever  see  this  account  of  us ;  even 
if  I  were  to  write  for  myself  alone  with  the  intention  of 
immediately  destroying  my  manuscript;  I  could  not  com- 
mit my  knowledge  of  her  to  paper.  The  very  act  appears 
to  me  as  a  breach  of  trust  While  I  could  confine  my- 
self to  the  objective  account  of  our  earlier  relations,  I  was 
nothing  more  than  a  reporter  of  objective  impressions.  We 
have  laughed  together  over  my  stiff,  mechanical  account  of 
our  meetings,  and  of  the  more  or  less  invented  conversations 
that  I  have  put  down;  and  on  various  occasions  when  I 
would  have  destroyed  my  manuscript  in  a  fit  of  impatience 


264  HOUSE-MATES 

with  the  hardness  and  unreality  of  my  history,  Judith  has 
insisted  that  I  should  tear  up  nothing  until  the  book  was 
finished. 

Indeed,  this  whole  apology,  which  must  seem  a  very  in- 
appropriate intrusion  into  my  narrative,  arose  out  of  a  dis- 
pute as  to  the  advisability  of  quoting  from  the  letters  she 
wrote  to  me  while  she  was  at  Cheltenham.  She  is  all  for 
frankness  and  realism.  "What  does  it  matter?"  she  has 
just  said,  "no  one  will  know  it's  us."  (How  queer  this 
faithful  reporting  looks!)  But  some  instinct  of  mine  re- 
volts and  will  not  permit  me  to  be  guided  by  her  judgment. 
I  suffer  an  actual  physical  nausea  when  I  make  the  at- 
tempt; a  feeling  very  similar  in  kind  to  that  I  experienced 
when  I  tried  to  re-design  that  destroyed  Queen  Anne  gable 
of  Parkinson's.  And  that  instinct  is  the  final  arbiter,  not 
because  I  concede  it  an  artistic  validity,  but  because  I  cannot 
write,  as  it  were,  against  the  grain. 

But  this  apology  threatens  to  lead  me  into  all  kinds  of 
discursions,  and  I  must  cut  it  short.  I  began  it  to  explain 
why  my  picture  of  Judith  bears  as  little  likeness  to  the 
Judith  I  know,  as  did  my  attempted  sketches  of  her  after 
our  first  real  meeting  in  Hill's  room.  Perhaps  I  have  made 
that  clear?  If  I  have,  there  is  no  more  to  be  said,  except, 
possibly,  to  draw  the  inference,  that  I  am  not  a  literary  ar- 
tist. If  I  were  I  should,  no  doubt,  be  ready  to  sacrifice  any 
personal  feeling  of  mine  or  Judith's  in  order  to  present  a 
truth.  I  am  very  thankful  that  no  such  sacrifices  are  re- 
quired by  the  profession  of  architecture!) 


XII 
ROSE  WHITING 


I  SUFFERED  the  most  horrible  experience  of  my  life  in 
the  May  of  that  year,  and  yet  it  was  an  experience  that 
has  no  real  bearing  on  the  development  of  my  story.  Never- 
theless, I  cannot  omit  some  account  of  that  tragedy.  In  the 
first  place  any  one  who  remembers  the  incident  would  throw 
a  doubt  on  my  general  veracity  if  it  were  omitted;  and  in 
the  second  place,  although  I  am  nothing  more  than  a 
spectator,  the  experience  had  its  effect  upon  my  manner 
of  thought;  was  an  influence  in  determining  the  new  rela- 
tions with  humanity  that  arose  out  of  the  intercourse  with 
my  house-mates  at  73,  Keppel  Street.  There  were  three 
new  members  of  our  community  that  spring;  a  doctor,  his 
wife  and  their  little  daughter  of  four  and  a  half.  They 
had  taken  the  two  rooms  left  vacant  by  the  Meares.  The 
room  that  had  been  occupied  by  Judith  and  Helen  was  still 
empty.  The  doctor  was  a  qualified  man,  but  he  was  one  of 
those  feckless,  incompetent  creatures  who  can  never  keep 
an  appointment.  He  held  some  position  at  a  dispensary 
while  he  was  with  us.  His  wife,  who  had  been  a  nurse,  was 
a  big,  handsome,  heavy-eyed  woman  who  boasted  that  she 
had  had  to  work  for  her  living  before  she  married  and  had 
no  intention  of  making  any  further  effort.  She  stayed  in 
bed  most  of  the  day,  and  allowed  her  little  girl,— a  pert, 
rather  pinched  child,— to  stray  about  the  streets.  Her  one 
explicit  instruction  was  not  to  bother  her  mother.  Mrs. 
Hargreave,  Hill  and  I  used  to  entertain  the  child  to  the  best 

265 


266  HOUSE-MATES 

of  our  ability.  After  the  first  week  she  had  the  free  run  of 
our  rooms — if  she  had  not  had  that  privilege,  her  only  re- 
source on  wet  days  would  have  been  the  shelter  of  an  arch- 
way. The  name  of  this  family  was  Bast.  They  were  not 
immediately  concerned  with  the  great  tragedy,  but  Bast 
was  the  second  person  to  know  of  it. 

And  apart  from  that  necessity  to  introduce  our  new 
tenants,  I  cannot  avoid  this  somewhat  detailed  mention  of 
them.  Bast  used  to  come  down  to  my  rooms  on  Sunday 
morning,  and  had  an  admiration  for  Mrs.  Hargreave  that 
she  certainly  did  not  reciprocate.  He  was  clever  in  his 
own  way,  but  his  controls  were  very  ^feeble  and  he  seemed 
to  lack  absolutely  any  faculty  for  concentration.  His  wife 
was  anathema  to  Hill,  and  has  the  distinction  of  being  the 
only  person  for  whom  I  have  heard  him  express  an  active 
dislike.  And,  finally,  the  child — ineptly  christened  Aurora 
— which  was  transformed  by  Hill  into  Oracles,  a  name  that 
still  sticks  to  her — has  very  definitely  entered  into  Judith's 
life  and  mine. 

The  Basts,  however,  had  not  broken  through  the  circle 
that  ringed  the  one  aloof  member  of  our  household.  Bast, 
I  know,  made  overtures  to  Rose  Whiting  before  he  had 
been  in  the  house  a  week,  and  she  snubbed  him  so  bitterly 
that  he  never  forgave  her.  I  can  understand  that.  She 
knew  no  doubt  that  he  desired  a  privilege  she  had  neither 
the  means  nor  the  inclination  to  afford  him. 


ii 

Her  period  of  prosperity  must  have  ended,  I  think,  about 
the  middle  of  March.  I  am  reasonably  certain  that  some 
man  had  been  keeping  her  through  the  winter,  and  I  be- 
lieve that  she  was  faithful  to  him.  I  am  almost  sure  that 
she  brought  no  man  into  the  house  during  that  time,  and 
I  had  a  curious  sense  of  disappointment  when  I  observed 
the  revival  of  the  old  traffic.  I  am  not  ashamed  to  admit 
that  although  I  had  never  spoken  to  her  since  that  very 


ROSE  WHITING  267 

brief  colloquy  of  ours  on  the  night  of  the  row,  I  had  a 
distinct  feeling  of  sympathy,  even  of  liking,  for  her. 

Hill  shared  that  feeling,  but  I  am  not  using  the  fact  as  a 
defence  for  with  the  single  exception  of  his  dislike  for 
Mrs.  Bast,  his  attitude  towards  all  humanity  was  one  of 
singular  gentleness.  He  and  I  discussed  Rose  Whiting's 
problem  before  she  had  it  so  tragically  solved  for  her,  but 
we  could  only  arrive  at  the  inevitable  conclusion  that  there 
was  nothing  to  be  done.  Her  independent  spirit  would  not 
have  acknowledged  the  necessity  for  any  reform  of  the 
Puritan  order,  or  have  accepted  support  for  which  she 
could  offer  no  return.  She  may  have  preferred  to  remain  a 
pariah  so  far  as  "73"  was  concerned,  but  she  certainly  did 
not  regard  herself  as  a  "lost"  woman. 

I  could  be  exceedingly  accurate  about  the  date  of  that 
event  which  so  disturbed  our  household  for  a  time,  but  it 
is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  thing  happened  one  Saturday 
night  in  May.  I  heard  two  people  come  in  about  midnight, 
and  guessed  that  it  probably  was  Rose  Whiting  and  a 
"friend,"  and  I  heard  the  man  go  out  again  about  an  hour 
later.  I  was  just  going  to  bed,  then.  I  had  been  working 
tremendously  hard  on  my  new  competition  which  was  quite 
the  most  ambitious  thing  I  had  done,  and  I  was  keyed  up, 
overtired,  and  not  in  the  least  inclined  to  sleep.  I  looked 
out  of  my  window  and  saw  the  shoulders  of  the  man  as  he 
turned  eastwards  towards  Russell  Square,  but  the  only  fact 
I  could  swear  to,  afterwards,  was  that  he  was  wearing  a 
bowler  hat. 

I  suppose  the  instant  sense  of  horror  that  assailed  me 
when  I  saw  that  man,  might  be  put  down  to  coincidence, 
certainly  found  it  very  difficult  to  explain,  in  the  light  of 
my  admission  that  the  same  kind  of  visitor  had  been  seen 
by  me  many  times  before.  And  there  is  undeniably  the 
suggestion  of  a  chance  concurrence  of  circumstances  in 
the  fact  that  on  this  one  night  of  all  others  I  should  have 
been  in  that  condition  of  nervous  exhaustion  which  so 
often  gives  us  the  power  to  transcend  our  physical  limita- 
tions. For  in  effect  I  did  that.  I  shuddered  when  I  had  my 


268  HOUSE-MATES 

brief  vision  of  those  hunched  shoulders  turning  quickly  up 
Keppel  Street.  I  was  afraid  and  full  of  a  horrid  appre- 
hension. Possibly  something  of  the  man's  own  quick  terror 
may  have  been  communicated  to  me.  I  was,  no  doubt,  an 
ideally  receptive  medium  at  the  moment. 

And  I  could  not  shake  off  the  feeling  when  I  had  dropped 
the  blind  and  returned  to  the  rational  light  and  comfort  of 
my  own  room.  I  began  the  usual  altercation  with  myself, 
but  my  domineering  intellectual  side  found  no  adequate 
reply  to  the  perpetual  suggestion  that  I  should  go  and  see 
if  everything  was  all  right.  And  the  queer  thing  is  that  the 
two  sides  of  me  shifted  so  absurdly  that  I  finally  went  at 
the  command  of  my  practical  intelligence.  I  went  at  last  to 
demonstrate  that  my  impulse  was  ridiculous. 

I  framed  an  apology  as  I  reluctantly  climbed  the  stairs. 
When  I  knocked  at  the  door,  I  was  prepared  with  the  ex- 
cuse that  I  thought  I  had  heard  a  cry  for  help.  It  was  a 
strange  excuse  to  offer,  but  it  did  not  seem  unusual  to  me  at 
the  time.  Since  then  I  have  often  wondered  whether  some 
cry  had  not  reached  my  subconsciousness  while  I  was  work- 
ing. I  know  the  illusion  of  having  heard  a  cry  took  such 
vivid  shape  in  my  mind  that  I  had  to  pause  before  I  an- 
swered, a  few  hours  later,  the  inspector's  question  on  that 
point.  And  yet,  I  had  no  real  presentiment  of  disaster  as 
I  went  upstairs. 

I  can  be  definite  about  this  last  point  because  I  know 
the  exact  moment  when  all  my  apprehensions  ceased  to  be 
aspersed  as  hallucinations  by  one  side  of  my  mind,  and  took 
the  form  of  terrifying  certainty. 

That  moment  came  when  I  knocked  at  Rose  Whiting's 
door  and  received  no  answer.  *  There  were  possible  rea- 
sons for  her  silence;  she  might  have  been  asleep,  or  she 
might  not  have  heard  my  nervous  little  tapping  if  she  had 
been  in  the  bedroom.  But  I  knew  then,  suddenly  and  ter- 
ribly, that  something  awful  lay  on  the  further  side  of  that 
door.  There  was  a  quality  in  the  stillness  tjiat  was  like 
nothing  I  had  ever  known.  It  was  the  stillness  of  an  im- 
mense effort  that  could  find  no  release  in  movement;  an 


ROSE  WHITING  269 

effort  that  Was  silently  clamouring  for  me  to  open  the 
door. 


HI 

An  absurd  impulse  that  was  more  nearly  modesty  than 
anything,  induced  me  to  disguise  the  truth  when  I  had  at 
last  roused  Bast. 

He  came  into  his  sitting-room  in  pajamas,  dishevelled, 
sleepy,  and  looking  more  unreliable  than  ever. 

"Some  kind  of  fit?"  he  repeated,  and  then  he  looked  at 
me  with  a  detestable  leer  and  said,  "I  say,  what  have  you 
been  up  to?" 

I  scowled  at  him.  I  was  weak  with  impatience  and  I  was 
not  afraid  that  I  might  be  implicated  in  a  charge  of  mur- 
der— that  fear  only  gripped  me  once,  very  briefly,  and  was 
dispersed  without  effort ;  but  I  found  that  I  could  not  pass 
his  imputations  without  an  explicit  denial. 

"Oh !  good  Lord,  don't  be  an  ass,"  I  said.  "It's  nothing 
of  that  sort.  There  was  some  man  up  there.  I  saw  him 
go  out.  I  believe  she's  dead." 

Bast  whistled  and  looked  more  suspicious  than  ever. 
"Hadn't  we  better  leave  it  alone?"  he  asked.  "Nasty 
thing  to  be  mixed  up  with." 

I  took  hold  of  his  arm.  "Oh !  come  on,"  I  said  fiercely. 
I  was  suffering  the  awful  feeling  of  helplessness  that  comes 
in  a  dream;  I  felt  as  if  it  would  take  me  years  to  con- 
vince him. 

And  he  still  continued  to  parry  and  evade  my  urgency. 
He  wrenched  his  arm  away.  "I'll  have  to  get  some  of  my 
tools,"  he  excused  himself. 

"For  God's  sake,  make  haste,  then,"  I  said.  I  repeated 
that  "for  God's  sake"  continually  as  we  argued.  I  clung  to 
the  phrase  as  the  single  form  of  articulateness  that  was 
possible  for  me.  An  explanation  was  too  long,  but  that 
adjuration  gave  me  a  little  relief.  ^ 

"All  this  looks  damned  suspicious,  you  know,  Hornby, 


270  HOUSE-MATES 

was  Bast's  last  evasion.  "How  long  had  you  been  with 
her?" 

And  then  his  wife's  voice  called  complainingly  from  the 
bedroom,  and  I  suddenly  gave  up  hope  of  getting  Bast  to 
come  down.  I  walked  over  to  the  door  with  a  new  inten- 
tion quite  clearly  in  my  mind. 

"Where  are  you  going?"  Bast  asked. 

"Police  Station,"  I  told  him  with  a  new  sense  of  relief; 
and  then,  with  the  bitterness  of  revenge  rather  than  with 
any  further  hope  of  inducing  him  to  come  down,  I  added : 
"I  suppose  I  may  tell  them  that  there  was  a  qualified  medi- 
cal man  in  the  house  who  refused  to  render  assistance." 

"Oh!  I'm  coming,  man,"  Bast  expostulated.  "I  only 
wanted  to  know  what  the  trouble  was.  You're  so  infernally 
confused." 

I  looked  back  and  saw  that  his  wife  in  her  nightdress  was 
standing  at  the  door  of  communication  between  the  two 
rooms.  She  began  some  shrill  interrogation,  but  I  did  not 
want  to  hear  her  scolding.  Neither  did  Bast.  He  caught 
me  up  before  I  had  reached  the  first  floor  landing.  I  believe 
he  came  as  much  to  escape  from  his  wife  as  from  fear  of 
my  threat.  He  had  not,  after  all,  brought  his  instruments 
with  him. 

IV 

Rose  Whiting  was  lying  huddled  by  the  sofa,  a  white- 
skinned,  stoutish  woman  up  to  her  neck,  and  above  that  a 
thing  of  sheer  horror.  I  had  not  been  nearer  to  her  than 
twelve  feet  or  so,  the  width  of  the  room,  but  I  might  have 
touched  her  without  noticing  the  wire  that  had  bitten  into 
her  throat,  and  was  completely  covered  in  front  and  at 
the  sides  by  the  pinched  flesh  of  her  neck. 

Bass  seemed  to  guess  the  cause  of  death  without  hesita- 
tion. He  turned  the  body  over,  roughly,  and  then  looked 
up  at  me  with  an  odd,  expressive  droop  of  his  mouth  and 
pointed  to  the  loose  ends  of  the  wire.  They  were  twisted 
two  or  three  times  and  he  unwound  them  without  difficulty 


ROSE  WHITING  271 

and  drew  the  wire  out  of  the  wound.  It  had  cut  right 
into  the  flesh  in  three  places,  but  no  blood  was  visible  until 
he  released  the  constriction. 

It  gave  me  a  curious  comfort  to  see  the  insouciance 
with  which  he  handled  the  body.  I  had  the  layman's  con- 
fidence in  the  expert  and  was  glad  to  be  relieved  of  re- 
sponsibility. 

"What's  to  be  done?"  I  asked. 

"No  use  trying  artificial  respiration,"  he  said,  carelessly. 
"She's  been  dead  half-an-hour,  at  least.  I  suppose  you'd 
better  go  to  the  police  station.  I'll  tell  Pferdy.  Can't  do 
any  good  here." 

He  appeared  to  have  forgotten  his  suspicion  of  me. 

I  was  glad  to  get  out  into  the  night,  but  I  think  I  came 
very  near  to  fainting  as  I  went  down  Keppel  Street. 

I  meant  to  go  straight  to  the  Police  Station  in  Totten- 
ham Court  Road,  but  I  met  a  constable  before  I  reached 
it  and  stopped  at  once. 

"There's  been  a  murder  at  73,"  I  announced  breath- 
lessly. 

He  thought  I  was  drunk  and  flashed  his  bull's-eye  in  my 
face. 

"Seventy-three  what?"  he  asked  gruffly. 

"Seventy-three  Keppel  Street,"  I  said.  "I  was  on  my 
way  to  the  police  station." 

"What  have  you  got  to  do  with  it?"  he  asked. 

"I  live  in  the  same  house,"  I  explained.  I  had  lost  my 
feeling  of  impatience,  now,  and  at  the  least  excuse  I  should 
have  become  garrulous.  All  the  uncertainty  was  over,  and, 
to  me,  much  of  the  horror  since  Bast  had  made  his  ex- 
amination. "There's  a  doctor  with  the  body,"  I  went  on, 
"but  I  discovered  it.  The  doctor's  name  is  Bast.  I  fetched 
him  down." 

"Look  here,  you'd  better  be  careful,"  the  man  warned 
me.  "Don't  you  say  too  much  till  you  see  the  inspector. 
I'll  come  that  far,"  he  concluded,  indicating  the  lamp  of 
the  station,  fifty  yards  down  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
road. 


HOUSE-MATES 

Neither  he  nor  the  sergeant-in-charge  at  the  police  sta- 
tion displayed  from  first  to  last  the  least  sign  of  perturba- 
tion. I  inferred  from  their  manner  that  they  were  cau- 
tiously aware  of  the  possibility  that  I  might  be  playing 
some  grotesque  practical  joke  upon  them.  They  ques- 
tioned me  gruffly,  and  as  if  I  were  giving  them  most  un- 
necessary trouble. 


Nothing  was  quite  real  to  me  that  night.  All  my  im- 
pressions were  hard  and  thin,  and  had  a  peculiar  bright- 
ness which  when  I  look  back  on  the  whole  experience  pre- 
sents it  in  terms  of  visibility  rather  than  of  sensation. 
After  Bast's  examination  of  the  body,  all  my  emotion  seems 
to  have  been  spent.  I  had  a  feeling  of  being  immensely 
separated  from  the  doings  and  sayings  of  the  little  fig- 
ures who  continually  reached  out  to  me  with  their  distant 
questions  and  commands. 

I  suppose  it  must  have  been  somewhere  about  two  o'clock 
when  I  returned  with  an  inspector  and  two  constables  to 
"73" ;  but  there  was  a  little  knot  of  people,  a  dozen,  I  dare 
say,  clustered  inquisitively  about  the  door.  One  of  them 
caught  me  by  the  sleeve  as  I  passed  him.  "What's  up?"  he 
asked  in  an  eager,  excited  voice.  I  took  no  kind  of  notice 
of  him. 

We  heard  Pferdminger's  voice  long  before  we  opened 
the  door.  One  of  my  blinds  had  been  pulled  up,  the  win- 
dow was  open  and  my  room  still  blazed  with  light.  It 
struck  me  that  the  sight  of  my  room  thus  displayed  was 
like  a  hole  torn  in  the  decent  curtain  of  the  street,  and 
that  it  exposed  the  secret  organs  of  life.  That  revealed 
interior  gave  me  an  impression  of  depth,  as  if  it  were 
the  beginning  of  an  interminable  vista  that  penetrated  into 
the  mechanical  heart  of  existence. 

Little  Pferdminger  was  leaning  against  the  table  in  the 
hall  when  we  entered.  He  was  extraordinary  excited  and 
voluble;  and  for  some  inexplicable  reason  he  was  wearing 


ROSE  WHITING  273 

a  soft  felt  hat.  Bast,  with  a  shabby  dressing-gown  over 
his  pyjamas,  was  sitting  on  the  stairs,  listening  to  him  with 
a  grim,  critical  smile. 

Pferdminger  made  a  sort  of  rush  at  us  as  we  entered, 
but  the  inspector  stopped  his  flow  of  quite  unintelligible  ex- 
planations with  a  curt  "Which  floor?"  and  then  gave  me 
my  first  feeling  of  respect  for  his  esoteric  knowledge  by 
saying,  "Rose  Whiting,  isn't  it  ?"  I  am  sure  that  I  had  not 
mentioned  her  name.  All  the  questions  that  had  been 
put  to  me  until  then  had  been  as  to  my  own  identity.  The 
police  might,  I  thought,  have  been  expecting  this  murder, 
and  now  it  had  come  their  one  real  concern  was  to  throw 
doubt  on  the  integrity  of  the  witnesses. 

I  stayed  in  my  own  room  while  the  inspector  and  one 
of  his  subordinates  (the  other  had  been  left  outside  on 
the  doorstep)  went  upstairs.  In  my  detached  way  I  was 
aware  of  a  considerable  clamour  beating  upon  the  rigid 
walls  that  shut  in  my  retired  personality.  I  heard  the 
heavy  tread  of  the  men  upstairs,  the  dull  murmur  of  the 
increasing  crowd  that  mumbled  mysteriously  in  the  roadway ; 
and  of  a  clear-cut,  monotonous  voice  that  was  apparently 
delivering  a  lecture  somewhere  away  in  the  hidden  depths 
of  the  house.  But  all  this  siege  of  activity  failed  to  perturb 
me.  I  knew  that  it  could  not  break  through  the  fine  de- 
fences that  stood  between  me  and  feeling.  My  mind  was 
working  swiftly  and  accurately,  like  a  precise  little  mecha- 
nism of  some  delicate  vivid  metal. 

It  responded  at  once  when  the  voice  that  had  been  thrill- 
ing so  steadily  upstairs  came  in  to  my  room  and  dropped 
a  -full  fifth  to  ask  me  a  question.  I  saw,  with  a  sense  of 
pride  in  my  faculty  for  seeing,  that  Mrs.  Hargreave  was 
standing  in  the  doorway,  dressed  mainly  in  her  eternal  fur 
coat ;  and  behind  her  hovered  a  little  crowd,  Herz  frightened 
and  grey;  Lippmann  rather  portentous  and  looking  grossly 
fat  in  an  elaborate  dressing-gown;  and  the  dull,  resigned 
figure  of  Mrs.  Pferdminger,  the  only  one  of  us,  I  think, 
beside  myself,  who  was  fully  dressed.  Little  Oracles  in  a 


274  HOUSE-MATES 

plaid  shawl  was  clinging,  pert  and  inquisitive,  to  the  fur 
of  Mrs.  Hargreave's  coat. 

"Who  did  it,  Mr.  Hornby?"  was  the  question  that  Mrs. 
Hargreave  had  put  to  me. 

"A  man  in  a  bowler  hat,"  I  said. 

"Then  you  saw  him?"  she  continued. 

"Only  that  much.    I  saw  him  go  out,"  I  told  her. 

She  appeared  to  be  taking  the  inquiry  in  hand  on  behalf 
of  her  select  followers,  but  she  was  interrupted  by  the  re- 
turn of  the  inspector  who  had  now  dropped  the  second  of  his 
supernumeraries  upstairs. 

"What's  all  this?"  he  began,  by  way  of  a  polite  opening, 
and  proceeded  to  takes  the  names,  including  Oracles',  of 
every  one  present.  Mrs.  Hargreave  wanted  to  argue  with 
him,  but  he  ignored  her.  He  had  little  Pferdminger  in 
tow,  and  referred  to  him  every  now  and  again  for  veri- 
fication. 

"Is  this  all  the  people  in  the  house?"  he  asked  him  when 
he  had  written  down  the  names  of  the  group  in  the  hall. 

"Vith  zose  you  already  haf,  yes,"  Pferdminger  replied 
sullenly. 

"Better  get  out  of  the  way,  then,"  the  inspector  said, 
and  with  a  gesture  he  warned  them  all,  including  Pferd- 
minger, out  of  the  room  and  shut  the  door  on  them. 

I  dare  say  that  he  was  very  conscious  of  his  importance 
just  then.  His  manner  was  very  different  from  that  of 
the  policemen  who  had  come  in  on  the  night  when  poor 
Rose  Whiting  defied  the  whole  world  of  convention. 

"I  shall  be  coming  with  another  officer  to-morrow  morn- 
ing to  take  your  deposition,"  he  said,  looking  at  me.  "Un- 
til then  I  should  advise  you  to  answer  no  questions,  and 
generally,  well,  keep  your  mouth  shut." 

I  nodded. 

"This  is  a  very  serious  business,"  he  added. 

"Very,"  I  said. 

"I  must  ask  you  not  to  leave  the  house  until  I  have 
seen  you  in  the  morning,"  he  went  on  sternly. 

"All  right,"  I  agreed. 


ROSE  WHITING  275 

And  then  he  suddenly  dropped  his  official  manner  and 
stroking  his  fine  moustache,  said,  "You're  a  bit  shook  up, 
of  course;  but  we  get  used  to  this  kind  of  thing.  I  was 
engaged  in  that  very  similar  case  in  Bernard  Street.  Same 
feller  done  'em  both,  if  you  ask  me.  Well,  good-night,  sir." 

I  should  have  offered  him  a  drink  if  he  had  stayed  an- 
other minute. 


VI 

I  went  to  bed  as  soon  as  he  had  gone.  I  took  a  book 
with  me  as  I  was  quite  convinced  that  never  in  my  life 
had  I  felt  less  sleepy.  But  as  soon  as  I  lay  down  I  col- 
lapsed almost  instantly  into  unconsciousness.  Perhaps  I 
fainted  and  the  faint  developed  into  natural  sleep.  I  re- 
member that  in  the  moment  that  intervened  between  my 
realisation  of  complete  prostration  and  the  blackness  of 
coma,  I  made  an  effort  to  blow  out  the  candle  and  was 
unable  to  make  the  least  movement.  And  that  uncompleted 
impulse  was  still  active  when  Pferdminger  determined^' 
woke  me  at  eleven  o'clock  the  next  morning.  I  raised 
myself — at  once,  as  I  thought — and  turned  to  the  table  by 
my  bed.  The  beginning  of  realisation  came  to  me  when 
I  saw  that  the  candlestick  was  empty.  Not  until  then  did 
I  become  aware  of  Pferdminger. 

"Ze  police  are  in  vaiting  for  you,  in  zere,"  he  said  peev- 
ishly, pointing  to  my  sitting-room.  "Zis  is  now  ze  sird 
time  you  vill  not  vake  yourself." 

"What's  the  time?"  I  asked.  I  still  found  it  hard  to 
believe  that  I  had  been  asleep. 

"More  than  eleven  o'clock,"  he  replied  impatiently.  "I 
vant  to  know  vat  you  say  to  ze  police." 

I  got  out  of  bed,  and  my  mind  working  back  through 
recent  events  picked  up  a  memory  of  the  injunction  that 
had  been  one  of  my  last  waking  impressions.  "The  in- 
spector told  me  to  keep  my  mouth  shut,"  I  said. 

"But  eet  ees  to  me— important,"  protested  Pferdminger. 

"Why  ?"  I  returned  snappishly,  as  I  put  on  my  dressing- 


276  HOUSE-MATES 

gown.  I  was  recovering,  then,  all  the  hard,  objective  im- 
pressions of  the  night,  and  my  chief  concern  at  the  moment 
was  whether  I  had  made  a  fool  of  myself.  I  could  re- 
member perfectly  the  parts  played  by  the  other  actors,  but 
the  memory  of  what  I,  myself,  had  said  or  done  or  felt, 
was  as  faulty  as  the  memory  of  a  book  that  I  had  read 
without  attention.  I  seemed  to  have  "skipped"  in  places. 

"Zey  must  not  know  of  men  taken  into  ze  house,"  Pferd- 
minger  was  protesting.  "Zat  is — important." 

"Oh !  rot,"  I  said.    "They  know  all  that  to  begin  with." 

"No !  no ! !  Zat  ees  not  so  .  .  . "  the  little  man  began  to 
expostulate  but  I  cut  him  short  by  leaving  the  room. 

I  .found  two  men,  the  inspector  and  a  little  grey-haired, 
brown-eyed  man  in  plain  clothes,  methodically  searching 
my  sitting-room. 

"Just  a  matter  of  form,"  the  inspector  explained  curtly, 
as  I  stared  in  astonishment.  "Have  you  got  a  key  for 
this  writin'  case?" 

I  supplied  the  key  and  suffered  one  of  the  worst  mo- 
rr-nts  of  the  whole  incident,  while  they  opened  and  glanced 
mto  half-a-dozen  of  Judith's  letters. 

"If  you'll  be  long,  I  may  as  well  have  breakfast,"  I 
ventured  after  an  agonised  interval. 

The  little  grey-haired  man  turned  round  and  gave  me 
a  friendly  nod.  "Do  what  you  like  so  long  as  you  don't 
leave  the  house,"  he  said. 

The  idea  of  going  up  to  Hill's  room  came  to  me  as  of- 
fering a  blessed  prospect  of  relief,  and  then  I  remembered 
that  he  was  away  for  the  week-end.  I  must,  indeed,  have 
been  in  a  queer  condition  of  mind  not  to  have  missed 
him  through  the  events  of  the  night.  But  I  was  horribly 
over-tired  and  over-strained  before  the  final  shock  of  that 
awful  discovery.  And  it  seems  probable  to  me  that  the 
condition  I  have  so  inadequately  described  (I  do  not  believe 
that  it  would  be  possible  to  describe  it  convincingly  to  any 
one  who  had  not  suffered  a  similar  experience),  that  and 
the  profound  sleep  which  followed  it,  saved  me  from  a 
severe  nervous  disturbance.  For  an  hour  or  two  I  had 


ROSE  WHITING  277 

been  protected  from  all  further  shock  to  my  sensibilities. 
If  a  bomb  had  fallen  at  my  feet  any  time  after  I  had  left 
Bast  in  that  horrible  room  upstairs,  I  should  have  watched 
it  with  a  quite  impersonal  interest.  Something  in  me  that 
commonly  responded  to  such  terrors  had  been  away,  or 
guarded,  or  perhaps  asleep. 

I  was  almost  my  normal  self  again,  after  I  had  chased 
Pferdminger  away  from  the  keyhole  of  the  bedroom  door, 
and  had  had  my  breakfast. 

The  two  officials  had  completed  their  investigation  be- 
fore I  had  finished ;  and  began  my  examination — "taking  my 
deposition,"  they  called  it.  And  it  was  during  this  examina- 
tion that  for  one  detestable  moment  I  was  afraid  I  might 
be  suspected  of  the  murder  of  Rose  Whiting. 

The  little  grey-haired  man  asked  all  the  questions,  and 
although  his  brown  eyes  had  met  mine  frankly  enough 
when  he  had  given  me  permission  to  have  breakfast,  he 
never  once  looked  at  me  directly  while  he  conducted  my 
examination.  He  did  it  all  with  rather  a  perfunctory  air, 
as  if  he  were  thinking  of  something  else. 

"I  want  you  just  to  give  me  an  account  as  near  as  you 
can  of  what  happened,"  he  began,  and  he  did  not  inter- 
rupt me  while  I  repeated,  in  effect,  the  impressions  I  have 
written  here.  After  I  had  finished  he  started  all  kinds  of 
apparently  irrelevant  questions  about  my  profession,  my 
family,  my  knowledge  of  the  other  people  in  "73,"  about 
anything  but  the  details  of  the  story  I  had  just  told  him. 

He  gave  a  sort  of  inconclusive  nod  when  those  ques- 
tions had  been  answered,  and  I  thought  he  had  finished. 
He  was  looking  out  of  my  window  when  he  began  again 
abruptly. 

"Was  there  a  light  in  Rose  Whiting's  room  when  you 
first  looked  in?" 

And  for  the  life  of  me  I  could  not  have  answered  that 
question  without  consideration.  It  is  a  fact  that  I  was 
not  sure  whether  or  not  the  gas  had  been  burning. 

"There  must  have  been,"  I  said  after  a  very  sensible 
pause.  "I'm  sure  I  didn't  light  the  gas  myself." 


278  HOUSE-MATES 

"Why?"  he  asked. 

"I  should  have  remembered  doing  that,"  I  replied,  not 
too  readily. 

"You  are  quite  sure  you  didn't  light  the  gas?" 

"Quite!" 

"But  there  was  a  light  burning?" 

"I  couldn't  have  seen  her  if  there  hadn't  been,"  I  said. 

"What  did  you  say  the  exact  time  was?"  he  put  in. 

"I  think  it  must  have  been  after  one  o'clock,"  I  said, 
again  after  a  moment's  hesitation  induced  by  his  sugges- 
tion that  I  had  already  made  a  definite  statement  on  that 
point. 

"How  long  had  the  man  been  gone  before  you  went  up  ?" 
he  continued. 

"A  few  minutes,  not  longer,"  I  said. 

"Why  did  you  go?"  was  his  next  enquiry,  and  it  was 
then  that  the  dreadful  fear  of  being  accused  came  to  me. 
I  could  not  answer  that  question  in  terms  that  I  could 
expect  him  to  understand;  and  while  I  still  hesitated  he 
confused  me  still  further  by  adding,  "Did  you  hear  her 
cry  out?" 

I  believe  I  was  really  in  danger  of  temporary  arrest  at 
that  moment.  I  was  not  absolutely  sure  whether  or  not 
I  had  heard  a  cry,  and  if  I  had  yielded  to  my  craven  im- 
pulse to  take  refuge  in  that  simple  explanation,  I  should 
have  been  open  to  the  gravest  suspicion,  in  as  much  as 
it  was  a  physical  impossibility  for  poor  Rose  Whiting  to  have 
cried  out  after  that  beastly  v:ire  had  strangled  her.  But  I 
did  not  think  of  that  when  I  answered.  I  told  the  truth  be- 
cause among  the  absurd  tangle  of  motives  that  influenced 
my  replies  I  reacted  against  the  one  that  would  have  made 
me  attribute  my  actions  to  a  supernatural  agent.  For  I 
was  aware  in  some  way  that  if  I  had  heard  a  cry,  I  had 
not  heard  it  with  my  ears. 

"Oh!  no,"  I  said.  "I  heard  nothing,"  and  saw  that  I 
was,  now,  apparently  committed  to  the  very  explanation 
I  had  wished  to  avoid. 

"Ah!"  commented  my  inquisitor,  and  I  knew  that  he 


ROSE  WHITING  279 

was  drawing  a  false  conclusion  as  to  the  reason  for  my 
visit.  He  wore  that  detestable  smile  with  which  so  many 
men  leer  at  sexual  intercourse.  His  next  question  con- 
firmed me. 

"I  suppose  you  were  waiting  for  this  chap  to  go?"  he 
remarked,  looking  askew  at  his  note-book. 

"Oh!  Great  Scott,  no,"  I  replied  fervently.  "I  only 
spoke  to  her  once,  ever.  One  night  there  was  a  frightful 
row  here." 

"When  was  that?"  he  put  in. 

"Sometime  last  October,"  I  said.  "Soon  after  I  came 
here." 

The  grey-haired  man  turned  to  the  inspector.  "That 
right?"  he  asked  sharply. 

"October  fourteen,"  the  inspector  replied  with  a  nod. 

That  little  interlude,  demonstrative  of  such  careful  of- 
ficial record,  made  me  more  determined  than  ever  to  keep 
to  the  strict  truth.  That  was  my  one  hope  of  avoiding  a 
trap. 

"Generally  work  so  late  as  one  o'clock?"  the  enquirer 
continued. 

"I  have  been  recently,"  I  said.  "I  am  going  in  for  a 
competition  and  the  drawings  have  to  be  finished  by  next 
Thursday." 

The  grey-haired  man  sighed  and  suddenly  allayed  my 
fear  by  dropping  his  inquisitorial  manner  and  looking-  at 
me  with  the  same  direct  stare  he  had  given  me  before  he 
had  begun  his  examination. 

"We've  no  suspicions  of  you,  you  know,  Mr.  Hornby," 
he  said.  "We  know  more  or  less  who  did  this,  though  we 
mayn't  know  his  name  or  where  to  put  our  hands  upon 
him.  But  if  I  might  suggest  it  to  you,  it  would  be  as 
well  before  you  answer  the  coroner  just  to  find  out  why 
you  did  go  up  to  that  gal's  room  at  one  o'clock  in  the 
morning." 

"The  truth  is,"  I  replied,  "that  I  had  a  presentiment 
something  was  up  when  I  saw  that  chap  go  out." 

The  little  man  pursed  his  mouth.    He  could  believe  me 


280  HOUSE-MATES 

innocent  of  murder  but  his  faith  in  my  moral  rectitude  went 
no  further  than  that. 

"Bad  luck  on  her,  just  now,  wasn't  it?"  he  remarked 
casually.  The  inspector  had  shut  up  his  note-book  and  I 
understood  that  this  was  mere  friendly  conversation. 

"Why  just  now?"  I  asked  innocently. 

"Well,"  the  little  man  replied  with  a  shrug.  "You  saw 
her,  didn't  you?" 

"Of  course  I  did,"  I  said. 

"Stark?"  he  added. 

"Absolutely,"  I  agreed. 

"Well  then  you  know  what  her  condition  was?"  he  said. 

But  even  then  I  could  not  follow  him. 

"Her  condition?"  I  repeated  vaguely. 

He  blew  out  his  lips  and  winked  at  the  inspector.  I  had 
convinced  him  of  my  innocence,  but  I  had  lost  his  respect. 

He  made  a  noise  as  if  he  were  soothing  an  infant. 

"Sh!"  was  his  comment.  "She  was  four  or  five  months 
gone,  poor  gal." 

VII 

I  spent  the  remainder  of  the  morning  in  writing  to  Judith. 
I  could  not  work  facing  the  inquisitive  crowd  that  con- 
tinually shifted  and  never  diminished,  both  under  my  win- 
dow and  in  greater  force  on  the  further  pavement.  When- 
ever I  showed  myself  they  stared  and  pointed  at  me,  and 
I  wondered  if  they  had  learnt  that  I  had  been  the  first 
to  discover  the  body.  There  was,  of  course,  no  report 
in  the  early  Sunday  papers,  but  the  story  of  the  murder 
had  got  about  in  some  mysterious  way.  I  saw  two  or  three 
men  who  were  obviously  reporters  attacking  the  stolid 
policeman  who  stood  four  square  on  our  top  step.  His 
only  reply  was  to  shake  his  head  and  wave  them  away 
with  a  powerfully  wooden  hand. 

Until  three  o'clock  the  house  was  strictly  in  possession 
of  the  police,  who  were  going  diligently  through  every 
room.  I  could  hear  their  incessant  tramping,  and  the  noise 


ROSE  WHITING  281 

of  those  heavy  footsteps  got  on  my  nerves  after  a  time — 
the  only  effect  that  I  could  trace — of  my  overstrung  condi- 
tion of  the  night. 

But  at  three  o'clock  we  reached  a  climax  with  the  ar- 
rival of  the  ambulance.  I  detected  a  different  note  in 
the  rumbling  of  the  crowd  as  it  drove  up,  and  looked 
out  of  the  window  to  see  the  gaunt  horror  of  the  stretcher 
being  lifted  out  of  the  waggon  by  four  policemen.  And 
I  heard  the  measured  tramp  of  the  men  as  they  came 
slowly  down  the  stairs,  and  the  strange  excited  murmur  of 
voices  that  swelled  into  a  hoarse  rattle  as  the  gratifying 
object  of  the  crowd's  curiosity  was  carried  across  the  pave- 
ment. 

Soon  afterwards  the  little  grey-haired  man  looked  into 
my  room  again  and  gave  me  an  informal  notice  of  the  time 
and  place  of  the  inquest. 

"No  need  for  you  to  stay  in,  now,  if  you've  a  fancy  to 
go  out,"  he  concluded.  "I  dare  say  you  don't  find  the 
place  any  too  cheerful."  And  then  he  advised  me  that 
the  reporters  would  soon  "be  on  my  track"  if  I  did  not 
keep  my  "eyes  skinned";  and  warned  me  to  give  them 
no  information  of  any  kind.  .  .  . 

I  had  an  unpleasant  sense,  then,  and  for  many  days  after- 
wards, of  this  interference  with  my  liberty. 

The  inquest  on  the  following  Tuesday  was  a  more  bear- 
able ordeal  than  I  had  anticipated,  and  the  coroner  never 
pressed  that  difficult  question  of  why  I  had  gone  up  to 
Rose  Whiting's  room  in  the  first  instance.  He  accepted 
my  statement  that  I  was  alarmed  when  I  saw  the  unknown 
man  depart,  as  a  perfectly  rational  cause  for  making  an 
enquiry.  I  suppose  he  had,  in  that  particular  at  least, 
been  advised  by  the  detective  or  whatever  he  was  who  had 
cross-examined  me.  I  never  learnt  his  proper  status.  ^  He 
did  not  appear  at  the  inquest ;  all  his  evidence  being  given 
by  the  inspector  who  had  accompanied  him. 

But  although  there  was  never  any  question  of  my  de- 
tention, I  could  not  rid  myself   for  a  long  time  of 
feeling  that  I  was  no  longer  a  free  individual.    If  I  was  not 


HOUSE-MATES 

watched  by  the  police,  I  was  a  person  of  inexplicable  sig- 
nificance to  the  crowd  that  for  more  than  a  week  gaped 
and  gaped  about  our  front  door,  and  found  my  presence  at 
.the  window  a  source  of  apparently  inextinguishable  satis- 
faction, so  that  I  had  to  finish  my  competition  drawings 
under  surveillance.  I  tried  working  with  the  blinds  down 
and  the  gas  burning,  but  I  found  those  conditions  even 
more  trying  in  the  bright  May  noonday  than  the  stupid 
staring  of  the  shifting,  pointing  idlers.  And  the  incessant 
annoyance  of  their  subdued  chattering  seemed  to  increase 
when  I  shut  out  the  sight  of  them,  as  if  they  found  cause 
for  new  suspicion  in  my  desire  for  privacy.  I  am  sure 
some  of  them  suspected  me  of  making  away  with  im- 
portant evidence  when  I  took  my  great  bundle  of  drawings 
to  the  stretcher  maker  on  Thursday  morning. 

(I  am  still  proud  of  the  fact  that  I  finished  those  draw- 
ings in  time.  It  was  all  mechanical  work,  then,  I  admit, 
and  some  of  it  was  very  hurried,  at  the  last,  but  they  were 
quite  presentable.) 

VIII 

I  have  nearly  finished  this  unpleasant  chapter,  and  I  shall 
be  glad  when  it  is  done  with — all  the  dreadful  sensations 
of  that  time  have  been  revived  as  I  have  been  writing,  so 
that  the  thing  has  become  very  real  again  to  me,  even 
though  I  may  have  failed  to  reproduce  a  tithe  of  the  horror 
and  strain  that  I  suffered.  But  before  I  leave  the  subject 
I  may  as  well  wind  up  the  incident  so  that  I  shall  not 
have  to  refer  to  it  again. 

The  effects  that  the  murder  had  upon  the  household 
at  73  Keppel  Street  were  not  important.  Lippmann  left 
the  house  the  day  after  the  inquest,  but  he  was  the  only 
deserter.  And  Rose  Whiting's  rooms  remained  unlet  to 
the  end  of  the  lease.  I  fancy  that  Pferdtninger  was  some- 
thing half-hearted  in  his  attempts  to  get  a  new  tenant,  and 
the  only  applicant  I  ever  heard  of  was  a  very  queer  looking 
chap  who  had,  I  infer,  a  taste  for  the  morbid.  He  told 


ROSE  WHITING  283 

Pferdminger  that  he  was  writing  the  story  of  a  murder 
and  had  been  waiting  for  a  chance  to  get  the  proper  atmos- 
phere. My  door  was  ajar  when  he  came  and  I  heard 
him  talking  in  the  hall.  He  talked  a  great  deal,  in  a  rapid, 
high-pitched  voice.  I  received  an  impression  that  he  was 
under  the  influence  of  drink  or  drugs.  He  was  refused 
without  hesitation. 

Pferdminger  had  had  a  shock  and  meant  to  be  very 
careful  in  the  future.  He  was  more  restrained  after  the 
murder,  or  that  was  my  impression,  but  he  harboured  a 
grudge  against  me ;  a  fact  that  had,  perhaps,  a  slight  influ- 
ence on  my  career.  I  believe  he  thought  in  face  of  all 
the  evidence  that  he  might  have  pretended  innocence  of 
Rose  Whiting's  profession  to  the  police  if  it  had  not  been 
for  me.  Even  at  the  inquest  he  took  elaborate  care  to 
describe  her  as  an  actress. 

And  the  murderer,  as  every  one  knows,  was  never  caught. 
There  were  many  reasons,  I  have  heard,  to  connect  this 
crime  with  the  one  in  Bernard  Street,  and  to  point  to 
their  having  been  committed  by  the  same  person.  There 
was  no  motive,  as  the  word  is  commonly  understood,  in 
this  connexion.  Rose  Whiting  was  probably  the  victim  of 
a  violent  lust  for  sexual  cruelty,  which  nothing  short  of 
murder  could  satisfy.  So  far  as  society  is  concerned,  that 
lust  may  be  considered  as  a  form  of  insanity,  and  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  murderer  who  succumbed  to  that  lust  is 
not  such  a  reprehensible  creature  as  the  man  who  kept 
Rose  Whiting  through  the  winter  and  threw  her  over  when 
he  found  that  she  was  going  to  bear  him  a  child, 
little  doubt  that  that  was  what  had  happened.  The  hypoth- 
esis so  convincingly  explains  all  the  known  facts,  and 
although  the  man's  name  did  not  appear  at  the  inquest 
I  believe  that  the>  police  knew  it.  And  in  my  opinion  i 
there  was  to  be  a  hanging,  he  was  the  greater  criminal  of 
the  two,  and  should  have  suffered  the  extreme  penalty 

He  may  be  alive  now.    If  he  is,  I  hope  he  may  read  this 
and  recognise  the  story  of  the  woman  whom  I  have  calle 
"Rose  Whiting." 


XIII 
AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR 


AS  my  bank  balance  steadily  decreased  until  the  calcula- 
tion as  to  how  much  longer  I  could  afford  to  remain 
in  Keppel  Street  became  an  ominously  simple  sum  in  mental 
arithmetic,  so  much  the  stronger  grew  my  determination 
to  "stick  it  out"  to  the  last  possible  moment.  I  had  a 
feeling  of  unjustifiable  pride  in  that  intention  to  "stick  it 
out."  I  comforted  myself  with  the  phrase.  It  appealed 
to  some  solid  English  basis  in  me  that  I  had  inherited 
from  my  father. 

The  principle  of  my  attitude  is  not  defensible  in  many 
cases.  There  are  occasions  when  commonsense  is  a  greater 
virtue  than  stolid  courage.  I  have  heard  how  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  our  gunners  would  stick  to  their  guns 
when  their  battery  had  been  located  by  the  enemy,  and 
how  we  had  to  learn  from  the  French  that  the  trained 
artilleryman  is  of  greater  value  than  many  guns  and  that 
his  duty  to  his  commander  and  his  country  is  to  take 
cover  an(i  not  to  die  foolishly  and  obstinately  at  his  post. 
But  there  was  a  reason  in  my  case  for  holding  on  as  long 
as  possible.  My  hope  of  finding  a  client  was  not  yet  dead. 
My  name  was  sometimes  bracketed  with  my  more  suc- 
cessful contemporaries  in  articles  that  discussed  the  merits 
of  the  new  school  in  domestic  architecture.  And  I  saw 
that  should  a  commission  eventually  come  my  way,  I  stood 
a  very  good  chance  of  losing  it,  if  I  had  no  office  of  my 
own. 

284 


285 

That,  however,  was  my  one  justification  of  any  worth; 
and  on  the  other  side  was  a  whole  array  of  considerations 
which  made  it  advisable  for  me  to  save  what  I  could  while 
had  the  opportunity.  By  selling  my  furniture  I  could 
have  lived,  economically,  in  one  room  for  another  six  months 
at  least,  while  now  I  risked  complete  destitution. 

I  consoled  myself  by  postulating  that  at  the  worst  I 
could  always  find  work  as  an  assistant,  but  that  resource, 
also,  I  meant  to  postpone  as  long  as  I  could;  and  mean- 
while I  began  present  economies  by  saving  in  food.  For 
a  whole  week  I  had  dinner  at  the  inclusive  cost  of  nine  pence 
at  a  little  eating  house  off  the  Tottenham  Court  Road; 
but  one  night  such  a  feeling  of  disgust  took  hold  of  me 
that  I  could  never  endure  the  sight — no,  I  think  it  must 
have  been  the  smell — of  the  place  again.  Afterwards  I 
got  much  less  nourishment  for  the  same  price  at  an  A.B.C. 
or  an  Express  Dairy ;  but  I  suffered  less  nervously. 

Also,  I  began  to  prepare  my  own  breakfast,  instead  of 
buying  it  from  Pferdminger,  and  that  saving  altogether 
apart  from  economical  reasons,  was  another  means  of  pro- 
longing my  stay  in  Keppel  Street. 

Pferdminger,  as  I  have  said,  had  a  grudge  against  me; 
and  as  soon  as  he  began  to  suspect  that  I  was  in  financial 
low  water,  he  found  occasion  to  annoy  me  in  small  ways. 
He  ceased  to  wait  upon  me  himself,  and  the  slovenly  girl 
who  was  the  Pferdminger's  only  servant  had  apparently 
been  instructed  that  my  bell  was  the  least  important  in 
the  house.  My  brass  plate  was  allowed  to  become  so 
tarnished  that  I  swallowed  my  pride  and  polished  it  my- 
self every  morning;  always  with  the  ridiculous  fear  in 
my  mind  that  the  long  expected  client  might  come  at  last 
and  catch  me  in  the  act.  But  the  most  pointed  of  his 
innuendoes  was  the  sudden  solicitude  he  displayed  with  re- 
gard to  the  payment  of  his  weekly  bills.  That  bill  was 
now  scrupulously  presented  every  Saturday  morning,  and 
he  took  the  further  precaution  of  coming  up  with  it  him- 
self to  avoid  any  possible  procrastination. 
He  must  have  meant  that  as  an  insult;  he  could  not 


286  HOUSE-MATES 

have  been  uneasy  as  to  receiving  ultimate  payment  while 
he  had  the  security  of  all  my  furniture  and  effects.  No,  the 
truth  is  that  he  disliked  me,  and  wanted  to  revenge  him- 
self, not  only  for  the  part  I  had  played  in  the  Whiting 
tragedy  but,  also,  for  my  treatment  of  him.  I  had  in- 
sulted him  on  the  morning  after  Helen  had  come  down 
to  my  room,  and  for  that,  and  for  my  general  attitude  of 
superiority  to  him — an  attitude  to  which  I  must  plead  guilty 
without  the  shadow  of  an  excuse — he  had  his  knife  into  me 
— to  use  the  cant  phrase. 

He  would  have  given  me  notice  to  leave  if  he  had  not 
been  afraid  of  me.  Little  money-grubber  that  he  was,  he 
would,  I  am  sure,  have  sacrificed  three  months'  rent  in 
order  to  be  even  with  me. 

It  is  curious  that  I  should  write  so  bitterly  of  him, 
now.  I  certainly  bear  him  no  grudge.  But  always  as  I 
write  I  recover  my  mood  of  the  moment,  and  I  cannot 
deny  that  in  July,  1906,  when  I  was  run  down  in  health 
and  nervously  worried,  my  dislike  for  Pferdminger  was  a 
positive  factor  in  my  life. 

And  that  factor  played  quite  an  important  part  in  my 
determination  to  remain  in  Keppel  Street  until  the  end  of 
the  lease.  I  would  not  be  beaten  by  him.  I  believe  it  was 
partly  on  this  account  that  I  relinquished  one  of  the  last 
strongholds  of  my  pride  and  went  out  one  morning  to  apply 
for  a  job  in  the  office  of  my  old  colleague,  Horton-Smith. 


II 

It  may  be  thought  that  I  was  deliberately  courting  an 
additional  humiliation  by  applying  to  a  man  who  had  been 
my  equal  in  Lincoln's  Inn.  But  apart  from  the  main  reason 
for  going  to  Horton-Smith,  I  was  in  a  state  of  mind  just 
then  which  made  the  tedious  explanations  and  the  demon- 
stration of  my  capacity  as  an  assistant  almost  unbearable. 
If  I  must  accept  degradation,  I  wished  to  plunge  and  be 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  287 

done  with  it.  Smith  knew  my  abilities  as  well  as  I  did 
myself. 

But  what  I  have  called  my  main  reason  was  an  emi- 
nently sound  and  rational  one.  Horton-Smith's  "luck"  had 
held,  and  he  had  won  the  big  competition  which  had  oc- 
cupied all  my  best  energies  for  three  months,  the  competi- 
tion upon  which  I  had  toiled  so  arduously  to  the  accom- 
paniment of  that  muttering  crowd  who  had  gaped  at  me 
after  the  murder. 

I  saw  the  announcement — a  five-line  paragraph  at  the 
foot  of  the  column — in  the  daily  paper  which  Hill  lent  me 
after  I  had  cut  down  the  extravagance  of  a  separate  sub- 
scription. Hill  knew  that  I  was  hard  up,  but  I  had  dis- 
guised the  real  truth  from  him.  He  believed  that  I  was 
merely  being  prudent  in  anticipation  of  future  difficulties. 
He  was  not  a  man  who  could  be  easily  deceived,  and  I 
flatter  myself  that  I  played  my  part  rather  well. 

I  was  not  crushed  when  I  saw  that  I  had  failed  again. 
I  knew  the  chances  of  competition  work  too  well  to  count 
upon  any  probability  of  winning,  and  as  always  happens 
to  me,  as  soon  as  my  design  was  finished  I  began  to  criticise 
it.  In  the  six  weeks  that  elapsed  between  the  time  my 
drawings  went  in  and  the  date  of  the  announcement,  I 
had  fairly  convincingly  persuaded  myself  that  I  was  not 
going  to  win. 

And  I  accepted  Smith's  success  as  an  omen.  I  had 
been  given,  I  thought,  the  choice  of  this  opportunity.  For 
I  rightly  counted  it  as  almost  a  certainty  that  I  should  get 
a  job  as  his  assistant.  This  competition  was  the  biggest 
thing  he  had  touched— the  estimate  was  for  £80,000— and 
he  would  need  a  larger  staff.  Moreover,  I  considered  it 
probable  that  among  all  possible  applicants  he  would  choose 
me.  I  smiled  at  the  reflection  that  it  was  a  Friday  and 
the  1 3th  of  the  month;  I  included  that  fact  in  the  general 
portent  of  the  omen  as  a  mark  of  my  entry  into  servitude. 

I  took  the  paper  up  to  Hill's  room  before  I  went. 

"I'm  going  out  to  get  a  job,"  I  told  him.  "It  means 
wealth— four,  perhaps  five,  pounds  a  week." 


288  HOUSE-MATES 

"How  do  you  know  you'll  get  it?"  he  asked. 

"I  just  know,"  I  said.  "It's  by  way  of  being  an  after- 
math." And  I  pointed  out  the  five  line  paragraph.  "You 
see,  as  luck  will  have  it,"  I  added,  "Horton-Smith's  an  old 
stable-companion  of  mine.  We  were  in  our  articles  to- 
gether, sometime  last  century." 

Hill  sat  up  in  bed.  "Look  here,  Hornby,"  he  said;  "if 
it's  just  a  question  of  tiding  over  .  .  ." 

"It's  mainly  a  question  of  my  not  being  a  silly  ass,"  I 
interrupted  him.  "Besides  which  it's  a  Friday  and  the  I3th 
of  the  month.  I  might  get  six  pounds  a  week  with  luck." 

I  left  him  looking  puzzled  and  a  trifle  downcast. 


in 
/ 

Horton-Smith's  offices  were  still  in  Verulam  Buildings, 
but  he  no  longer  lived  there,  as  he  had  done  when  he  first 
started  in  private  practice.  Indeed,  I  found  that  in  addi- 
tion to  the  three  rooms  which  composed  the  suite  of  cham- 
bers on  the  second  floor  he  now  rented  another  room  on 
the  floor  above  as  a  tracing  office. 

He  explained  all  that  as  soon  as  I  had  congratulated  him 
on  his  latest  success.  He  was  a  good  fellow,  and  I  could 
make  allowance  for  a  slight  touch  of  swelled  head  that 
morning,  although  those  symptoms  made  the  offer  of  my 
degradation  a  trifle  harder  to  make. 

"Well,  look  here,  old  chap;  I've  really  come  to  see  you 
on  a  matter  of  business,"  was  my  method  of  plunging  into 
his  explanation  that  he  would,  now,  have  to  get  rid  of 
his  lease,  or  sublet  his  present  chambers — to  take  larger 
offices. 

He  looked  at  me  keenly  when  I  said  that.  I  have  no 
doubt  my  manner  put  him  on  the  alert.  And  he  was  a 
good  business  man.  He  won  his  competitions  on  his  plan- 
ning— the  two  things  go  together. 

"That's  good,"  he  commented. 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  289 

"I  want  you  to  give  me  a  job— as  an  assistant,"  I  ex- 
plained. 

"By  Gad,  I'm  sorry,  old  chap,"  he  said.  "Have  you  made 
a  mess  of  it,  somehow?" 

"Well,  I've  got  no  work  in  hand,"  I  said,  "and  I've  just 
failed  to  win  an  eighty-thousand  pound  competition." 

He  whistled  and  tried  to  cover  a  triumphant  smile. 
"Great  Scott,  were  you  in  for  it  ?"  he  remarked.  "I'm  lucky. 
The  drawings  are  on  view  this  morning,  just  over  the  way. 
Shall  we  run  over  and  have  a  look  at  'em  ?" 

"We'll  settle  the  business  arrangement  first,"  I  said.  "I 
want  to  know  what  you'll  give  me.  I'm  not  cheap,  you'll 
understand,  but  I  know  my  value,"  and  I  could  not  resist 
the  temptation  to  cool  him  down  a  little,  by  adding,  "espe- 
cially to  you." 

He  smiled  rather  self-consciously.  "Do  you?"  he  said, 
attempting  the  air  of  a  thoroughly  successful  architect. 

"Rather!"  I  replied.  "I'll  help  you  to  get  a  decent  ele- 
vation for  once.  That's  the  one  thing  you  can't  do." 

He  bit  his  lip  and  frowned  with  just  the  old  boyish  ex- 
pression he  used  to  wear  when  Geddes  and  I  chaffed  him 
about  his  designs  in  Lincoln's  Inn;  and  then  he  laughed 
good-humouredly. 

"Oh !  well,  there's  something  in  it,"  he  confessed.  "How 
much  do  you  want?" 

"Well,  you  could  hardly  pay  such  an  expert  adviser  as 
I  am  less  than  six  pounds  a  week,"  I  said. 

He  made  a  wry  face  but  he  did  not  attempt  to  bargain 
with  me.  "All  serene,"  he  said,  and  added,  "I  shan't  want 
you  for  a  couple  of  months,  of  course." 

I  had  not  thought  of  that  awful  proviso;  and  I  dare 
say  he  would  not  have  made  it  if  I  had  not  asked  so 
high  a  salary.  In  two  months  I  should  be  on  the  rates 
unless  I  sold  my  furniture  or  borrowed  from  Hill.  But 
for  the  life  of  me  I  could  not  humble  myself  further  to 
Horton-Smith.  I  had  reached  some  barrier  that  I  could 
not  overstep,  at  that  moment.  I  suppose  the  easiness  of 
our  relations  had  given  me  a  sense  of  retaining  my  equality 


290  HOUSE-MATES 

with  him  in  spite  of  temporary  embarrassments.,  In  any 
case,  I  could  not  face  the  admission  that  I  was  almost  a 
pauper.  I  should  have  had  to  plead  with  him. 

"About  the  middle  of  September,"  I  said  carelessly.  "Do 
you  expect  to  be  in  your  new  offices  by  then?  Of  course, 
if  anything  turns  up  to  prevent  my  coming  to  you,  I'll  let 
you  know  in  good  time." 

"Thanks!  Yes,"  he  agreed;  but  I  saw  that  he  had  no 
doubt  of  getting  me. 

Afterwards  we  went  over  to  the  Holborn  Town  Hall 
together  and  viewed  the  acres  of  stretchers  that  were  hung 
there.  If  there  was  anything  in  the  arrangement  of  those 
drawings,  my  entry  must  have  stood  well  with  the  as- 
sessors, for  Horton-Smith's,  the  second  premiated  design, 
my  own  and  one  other,  shared  the  place  of  honour  on  a 
big  screen  •'et  across  at  the  end  of  the  room. 

I  had  hopefully  and  yet  sadly  adopted  the  motto 
"Dumspiro,"  writing  it  in  one  word ;  and  that,  I  think,  was 
the  only  thing  I  was  ashamed  of  when  I  saw  my  drawings 
again — drawings  so  tragically  rich  in  association ;  every 
line  of  that  hasty  "lettering"  cried  aloud  to  me  that  two 
months  ago  there  had  been  a  murder  in  Keppel  Street. 
Horton-Smith  had  unimaginatively  signed  his  work 
"Munting,"  a  joiner's  word  for  the  middle  stile,  or  the 
mullion,  of  a  framed  door.  But  I  think  it  represented  him 
better  than  he  knew.  It  so  well  suggested  his  conscious- 
ness of  being  in  the  centre  of  things. 

I  had  the  upper  hand  in  our  critical  exchanges ;  my  plan 
certainly  stood  the  test  of  comparison  better  than  his  eleva- 
tion. He  admitted  that,  with  just  a  touch  of  pique,  and 
explained  that  he  had  always  meant  to  reconsider  the  ex- 
terior if  he  got  the  job.  And  to  cover  his  admission  he 
gave  me  a  lecture  on  the  advisability  of  being  practical 
in  work  of  this  kind.  "It's  the  plan  that  decides  most  com- 
petitions," he  said.  "Now  where  I  think  you  went 
wrong  .  .  ." 

We  were  absolutely  agreed  that   the  second  premiated 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  291 

design — the  brute  who  sent  it  in  got  £50— was  dreadfully 
poor  stuff.  That  fifty  pounds  would  have  helped  me  to 
beat  Pferdminger  hands  down. 


IV 

I  was  crossing  Bloomsbury  Square  when  I  realised  that 
I  was  not  the  least  anxious  to  return  to  Keppel  Street; 
and  I  had  at  the  same  moment  a  sense  of  loss  which  I 
failed  immediately  to  understand.  I  fancied,  at  first,  that  it 
must  have  something  to  do  with  Judith ;  but  when  I  thought 
of  her  I  understood  that  my  love  for  her  was  in  no  way 
related  to  my  associations  with  the  house  in  which  I  had 
met  her.  No,  so  far  as  she  was  concerned,  my  morning's 
work  had  brought  golden  promise.  Economically  we  were 
free  to  marry  as  soon  as  she  could  find  release  from  at- 
tendance on  the  aunt  who  still  hovered  between  death  and 
recovery.  With  my  £300  a  year  and  Judith's  £200  we  could 
be  married  in  the  autumn.  For  her  letters  had  told  me 
that  she  had  no  further  doubt  of  herself.  Our  correspond- 
ence had  grown  more  passionate  in  the  last  few  weeks. 
We  had  ceased  to  disguise  our  longing  for  each  other. 
My  new  employment  had,  in  fact,  brought  the  promise  of 
happiness  very  near  to  me,  and  yet  I  had  a  sense  of  loss. 

And  when  I  recognised  it,  it  seemed  at  first  sight  so 
trivial  and  absurd  that  I  laughed  aloud  in  the  desert  of 
my  separation  from  the  casual  pedestrians  in  the  Square. 
I  was  no  longer  tied  to  my  rooms  by  the  uncertain  joys  of 
expectation.  My  hope  of  that  dilatory,  emancipating  client 
had  vanished.  I  had  accepted  the  choice  of  servitude,  and 
automatically  I  was  relieved  from  the  pains  of  indecision. 
What  was  there  to  regret  ?  I  asked  myself.  For  the  present, 
I  might  sell  my  furniture  and  take  two  months  holiday 
somewhere  near  Cheltenham— I  need  do  no  work  during 
that  time ;  and  Heaven  knows  that  I  wanted  a  rest.  In  the 
immediate  future  I  might  marry  Judith  and  settle  down  on 
what  was  after  all  a  quite  sufficient  income.  And  as  to  the 


292  HOUSE-MATES 

dim  future  that,  too,  would  not  be  so  gloomy.  I  knew  that 
I  was  a  better  architect  than  Horton-Smith.  I  could  make 
myself  invaluable  to  him.  I  might  reasonably  look  for- 
ward to  some  kind  of  partnership  with  him  at  no  very 
distant  time. 

And  then  I  looked  up  and  saw  a  strange  fascia  glar- 
ing along  the  whole  front  of  respectable  houses  that  faced 
me  across  the  Square.  "Wilfred  Hornby:  Failure,"  was 
the  shout  of  that  great  sign  and  I  felt  that  all  London  was 
pointing  at  me. 

I  had  given  up  the  fight.  I  was  the  man  who  had  ac- 
cepted security  at  the  price  of  his  individuality.  I  was 
ready  to  take  in  exchange  this  partnership  with  a  man  who 
would  never  allow  me  a  free  hand.  I  knew  well  enough 
what  that  collaboration  with  Horton-Smith  would  mean, 
and  most  certainly  it  did  not  mean  the  development  of  my 
ideals.  He  was  a  practical  business  man  with  a  good  head 
for  arrangement  and  construction.  And  inevitably  he  would 
use  me  for  mere  money-making.  I  should  turn  my  back  on 
ideals  and  become  fat  and  prosperous.  I  should  creep  back 
into  the  shell  that  had,  as  I  thought,  been  so  effectively 
broken  by  the  passions,  terrors  and  interests  that  had  pierced 
me  in  that  wonderful  house  in  Keppel  Street — the  house  to 
which  I  wanted  to  return  no  more. 


My  body  was  weak  and  my  mind  extraordinarily  clear 
as  the  result  of  my  recent  fasting,  and  I  look  no  further 
than  that  for  an  explanation  of  my  vivid  illusion  that  the 
proclamation  of  my  failure  was  written  in  fire  across  the 
dull  solemnity  of  Bloomsbury  Square.  I  knew  perfectly 
well  that  no  eye  but  my  own  could  see  that  denouncement 
of  my  insignificance,  and  yet  I  crept  away  shamefaced,  as 
if  I  were  branded  with  the  visible  stigma  of  disgrace.  I 
retreated  aimlessly  and  was  hardly  aware  of  my  surround- 
ings until  I  found  myself  on  the  diagonal  path  that  would 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  293 

lead  me  to  the  still  centre  of  the  gardens  in  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields. 

I  found  a  seat  there  and  rested  for  a  time  among  the  tired 
driftings  of  humanity  that  had  been  whirled  out  of  the 
booming  tornado  of  London  traffic. 

I  wanted  to  hold  my  thoughts  steady  in  order  that  I  might 
make  a  new  inquiry  into  my  position,  reconsider  my  de- 
termination to  sell  my  artistic  ideals;  but  I  found  that  I 
had  no  power  of  guiding  my  'mental  processes.  I  saw 
clearly,  but  I  could  not  choose  my  subject.  Nevertheless 
it  seems  to  me,  now,  that  some  control — it  may  have  been 
nothing  more  than  a  congruous  association  of  ideas — exer- 
cised a  faculty  of  selection.  It  was  almost  certainly  asso- 
ciation that  set  me  thinking  of  Parkinson's  job  with  its 
Queen  Anne  gables. 

I  had  denied  my  artistic  conscience  in  that  case  without  a 
struggle,  and  I  had  sneered  at  Geddes  for  reproaching  me ; 
but  I  found  no  fault  with  myself  on  that  score.  Parkinson's 
commission  had  been  a  stepping  stone  to  private  practice 
and  the  free  hand  that  was  my  ultimate  goal.  And  I  had 
not,  then,  committed  myself  as  I  should  now  commit  my- 
self, forever,  by  accepting  the  dictates  of  Horton-Smith. 
Moreover,  that  remote  concession  was  made  in  the  days 
before  I  went  to  Keppel  Street.  .  .  . 

I  lost  sight  of  the  old  bargain  with  my  conscience  in  the 
new  suggestion.  I  thought  of  the  change  in  myself.  I  af- 
firmed the  fact  of  change  with  a  feeling  of  satisfaction. 
And  then  the  panorama  of  my  recent  life  passed  before 
the  background  of  my  mind  and  temporarily  obscured  the 
consideration  of  my  immediate  problem. 

I  saw  bright,  fascinating  pictures  that  seemed  to  con- 
dense experience  into  a  single  movement. 

The  figure  of  the  unhappy  Rose  Whiting  danced  before 
me,  passing  through  rapid  phases  of  eagerness,  resent- 
ment and  determination  before  she.  slid  away  cowering, 
with  her  eyes  fixed  in  a  beseeching  stare  of  horror  and 
dismay. 

Behind  her  came  Mrs.  Hargreave,  sturdily  erect,  with  a 


294-  HOUSE-MATES 

fanatic  gaze  that  was  fixed  too  intently  on  some  imagined 
thing  she  had  abstracted  from  the  great  content  of  life. 
And  behind  her  the  face  of  her  husband  flashed  up  for  a 
moment,  like  the  face  of  a  wild  creature  that  moodily  paced 
a  cage  it  had  not  the  courage  to  destroy. 

And  I  saw  Helen,  absorbed  in  the  contemplation  of  her 
own  misery ;  a  drooping,  despondent  figure,  that  passed  with 
a  moody  resentment. 

And  then  I  tried  to  conjure  up  a  vision  of  Judith,  and 
the  picture  broke  like  an  interrupted  dream. 

I  became  aware  of  the  bright  July  day,  and  the  hissing 
tremor  of  the  tall  trees  that  responded  to  a  wind  of 
which  I  was  barely  sensible.  And  high  up  through  the 
leaves  I  could  see  the  open  blue  of  bright  sky,  and  the 
bellying  sails  of  majestic  cloud,  exquisitely  white,  that  set 
a  slow  course  across  the  great  width  of  heaven.  A  little 
whirlwind  of  dust  leaped  and  spun  for  an  instant  across 
the  gravel  playground. 

I  felt  as  if  life  was  momentarily  arrested ;  as  if  the  wind 
and  the  cloud  and  the  dust  alone  moved,  while  humanity 
waited  for  a  new  impulse. 

I  looked  out  towards  the  invisible  windows  of  my  old 
office  across  the  Fields.  I  had  begun  there,  shaping  my 
desires  within  the  shell.  I  had  touched  the  need  for  a 
larger  expression  at  Keppel  Street.  And,  now,  I  waited 
for  a  fresh  impulse.  I  was  in  the  calm  centre  of  the  storm, 
relieved  of  the  need  for  volition.  Beside  me  an  old  man, 
with  a  grimy,  deeply-furrowed  face,  stared  lifelessly  be- 
fore him,  as  if  for  him  the  need  of  a  new  impulse  had 
passed  forever. 

I  got  up  impatiently  and  marched  back  into  the  wind 
and  stress  of  Holborn.  My  resolve  had  crystallised  into 
the  bathos  of  an  intention  to  drive  away  dreams  by  indulg- 
ing myself  with  a  sufficient  meal.  I  wanted  food  and  energy 
to  take  up  the  fight  again.  And,  at  least,  I  would  not  be 
beaten  by  Pferdminger.  I  would  stay  at  "73"  until  my 
time  was  up,  cost  me  what  it  might. 

I  had  still  two  months  of  hope. 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  295 


VI 


I  calculated  that  with  care  I  could  make  my  present  re- 
sources last  for  three  weeks.  I  had  closed  my  banking 
account  and  now  carried  my  entire  capital  in  my  trousers 
pocket.  When  that  money  had  gone,  I  counted  on  my 
watch  and  my  case  of  mathematical  instruments  to  keep 
me  for  another  three  weeks.  The  last  fortnight  must  be 
paid  for  by  selling  books  or  a  piece  of  furniture,  unless  I 
could  manage  to  earn  something  before  then — by  writing 
another  article,  for  instance.  My  calculations  were  based 
on  an  outlay  of  thirty-five  shillings  a  week,  of  which  Pferd- 
minger  took  twenty-two  and  sixpence  for  rent  and  gas — 
the  latter  charge  being  based  on  an  estimate  of  sixpence  a 
burner  including  a  gas  ring  in  the  bedroom  where  I  now 
cooked  my  own  breakfast.  I  worked  out  this  summary 
of  my  resources  after  a  really  satisfactory  meal  that  had 
cost  me  nearly  three  shillings,  and  I  felt  exceedingly  hope- 
ful. Incidentally  I  included  that  meal  as  a  part  of  my 
capital.  I  meant  to  eat  no  more  that  day  except  for  a 
little  bread  and  butter  with  a  cup  of  tea  in  my  own  room 
before  I  went  to  bed. 

That  problem  of  economising  in  food  began  to  fascinate 
me  in  the  course  of  the  next  two  weeks.  Now  that  the 
period  of  my  poverty  was  definitely  fixed,  this  game  of 
trying  to  save  something  out  of  the  twelve  and  sixpence 
left  to  me  for  food  and  washing  had  no  terrors.  I  looked 
forward  to  future  compensations  and  had  no  feeling  of 
present  martyrdom.  Indeed,  I  think  that  I  enjoyed  this 
juggling  with  small  sums  of  money.  The  four  shillings 
and  sevenpence  that  I  managed  to  save  out  of  my  first 
week's  allowance  gave  me  a  delightful  sense  of  living  within 
my  means;  and  I  never  once  reproached  myself  for  past 
extravagances. 

I  saw  the  announcement  of  Gladys's  wedding  on  the 
Tuesday  after  I  had  seen  Horton-Smith.  Morrison  Blake's 
celebrity  had  earned  him  a  two-inch  paragraph  in  the  Daily 


296  HOUSE-MATES 

Telegraph.  I  was  surprised  that  the  wedding  should  have 
been  delayed  so  long.  Whenever  I  had  thought  of  my 
cousin  since  the  great  row  at  Ken  Lodge,  I  had  thought 
of  her  as  Blake's  wife.  But  when  I  came  to  consider  the 
probable  cause  of  the  postponement,  I  attributed  it  to 
Blake's  procrastination.  No  doubt,  he  had  not  been  too 
willing  to  give  up  the  opulent  freedom  of  his  bachelor- 
hood. I  wondered  whether  Gladys  had  had  much  difficulty 
to  induce  him  finally  to  fix  the  date?  I  guessed  that  she 
had  managed  him  tactfully  but,  towards  the  end,  very 
firmly. 

And  it  was  on  the  following  Thursday  that  I  received 
a  short  note  from  Aunt  Agatha  expressing  surprise  that 
I  had  never  been  to  see  them,  referring  to  Gladys's  wedding 
with  a  hint  of  stating  a  grievance  against  me  for  not  at- 
tending it,  and  asking  me  if  I  would  not  have  dinner  with 
them  on  that  day  week — "just  Lady  Hoast,  and  one  or 
two  people,"  she  added,  probably  as  a  hint  that  I  should 
be  expected  to  dress. 

My  first  impulse  was  to  refuse,  but  after  deliberating  the 
invitation  over  my  preparations  for  breakfast,  I  decided 
to  accept  for  two  reasons.  The  first  and  more  important 
was  that  I  should  be  able  to  save  at  least  a  shilling,  and 
get  a  tremendously,  reinforcing  meal;  the  second  was  that 
since  my  pride  would  not  be  hurt,  the  offer  of  reconcilia- 
tion having  come  from  them,  I  might  as  well  make  use  of 
my  uncle  if  his  recommendation  were  still  available.  It 
was  just  possible  that  he  might  have  a  client  in  view  for 
me,  and  that  I  might  at  this  eleventh  hour  be  saved  from 
Horton-Smith  and  the  expediency  of  his  practical  de- 
signs. 

But  chiefly  I  looked  forward  to  the  dinner,  and  was 
horribly  tempted  once  or  twice  to  anticipate  the  spending 
of  that  extra  shilling. 

The  twenty-sixth  was  an  abominably  hot  day.  London 
was  just  at  the  beginning  of  that  heat  wave  which  scorched 
us  in  1906.  And  although  I  enjoy  hot  weather  as  a  rule, 
it  interfered  in  this  case  with  my  arrangements  for  at- 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  297 

tending  my  aunt's  dinner-party.  I  had  intended  to  walk. 
I  was  determined  not  to  throw  away  the  cost  of  half  a 
week's  living  on  a  cab.  But  without  an  overcoat  and  in 
full  evening  dress  I  could  not  face  Camden  Town  High 
Street ;  while,  if  I  wore  an  overcoat,  I  foresaw  that  the  heat 
would  be  too  much  for  my  shirt  and  collar.  I  decided  at 
last  to  take  the  bus  to  Hampstead  Station,  and  then  walk, 
very  slowly,  up  the  hill. 

I  allowed  plenty  of  time,  but  I  was  amazed  at  the  ef- 
fect the  heat  had  upon  me.  I  took  off  my  overcoat  as  soon 
as  I  reached  East  Heath  Road ;  but  even  then  I  had  to  stop 
and  rest  every  minute  or  two  for  fear  of  getting  too  hot. 
I  remember  that  I  kept  mopping  my  face  with  my  spare 
handkerchief  and  commenting  under  my  breath  that  I 
seemed  to  be  as  weak  as  a  rat. 

When  I  got  to  Ken  Lodge  I  was  five  minutes  late,  but 
my  shirt  front  was  as  stiff  as  a  cuirass. 

I  entered  the  drawing  room  with  quite  a  gay  feeling  of 
lightness  and  clearness.  I  greeted  my  aunt  with,  I  thought, 
an  appropriate  ease  of  manner;  and  then  shook  hands  with 
my  uncle  a  little  carelessly — I  meant  him  to  understand 
from  the  outset  that  I  regarded  myself  as  the  injured  party. 
And  I  found  that  I  was  no  longer  afraid  of  him.  The 
portentous  wink  with  which  he  returned  my  salutation 
made  me  want  to  laugh. 

There  were,  I  believe,  four  other  people  present  besides 
Lady  Hoast — who  was  gracious  enough  to  remember  me— 
but  three  of  them  seem  to  have  made  no  impression  on 
my  mind.  I  could  not  be  sure,  now,  whether  I  had  ever 
met  them  before  or  whether  they  were  perfect  strangers 
to  me.  The  fourth  was  a  thick-set,  clean-shaven  man,  witl 
an  intelligent,  keen  face.  He  was  introduced  to  me  by  my 
uncle  as  Mr.  Henry  Graham ;  a  name  that  I  felt  I  ought 
to  remember.  I  thought  he  stared  at  me  rather  curiously ; 
but  I  was  conscious  that  both  my  uncle  and  aunt,  also,  looked 
at  me  now  and  again  with  a  kind  of  quick  furtweness.  .1 
peeped  down  at  my  shirt-front,  afraid  that  it  had,  after 
begun  to  show  signs  of  buckling;  and  when  Lwas  reas- 


298  HOUSE-MATES 

sured  upon  that  point  I  began  to  wonder  if  I  were  not, 
perhaps,  behaving  a  little  oddly.  I  felt  a  tremendous  con- 
fidence in  myself,  but 'I  could  not  be  perfectly  sure  that 
I  was  saying  the  right  things.  Occasionally  I  would  be- 
come aware  of  the  sound  of  my  own  voice  speaking,  and  be 
quite  uncertain  what  I  had  been  saying. 

Fortunately  dinner  was  announced  almost  immediately, 
and  I  knew  that  if  there  was  anything  wrong  with  me  it 
was  emptiness.  I  had  had  nothing  to  eat  since  my  bread 
and  butter  breakfast.  I  felt  that  it  would  be  sheer  ex- 
travagance to  eat  with  that  feast  ahead  of  me. 

And,  indeed,  the  soup — it  was  mock-turtle — had  an  imme- 
diate effect  upon  me.  The  slight  feeling  of  being  light- 
headed left  me,  and  I  began  a  perfectly  reasonable  conversa- 
tion with  Lady  Hoast  on  the  subject  of  motor-traction. 
She  regarded  tubes  and  motor  buses,  I  believe,  as  being  al- 
most works  of  the  devil. 

"Those  awful  tubes,"  I  remember  her  saying,  "so  noisy — 
and  the  atmosphere.  I  thought  I  should  certainly  faint 
the  last  time  I  went  in  one." 

I  think  I  replied  that  tubes  had  their  obvious  disadvan- 
tages and  added  very  reasonably  that  the  new  tube  from 
Charing  Cross  to  Hampstead  would  nevertheless  have  been 
a  great  convenience  to  me  that  evening. 

We  had  had  fish  and  an  entree  before  I  became  aware 
that  the  heat  of  the  room  was  getting  horribly  oppressive. 
I  was  wet  with  perspiration,  my  heart  was  beating  at  a 
most  unholy  pace ;  and,  most  curious  of  all,  I  was  suddenly 
seized  with  an  unaccountable  distaste  for  food. 

I  frowned.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  frowned  quite  tre- 
mendously. I  was  afraid  of  doing  something  to  disgrace 
myself.  And  then  Lady  Hoast  most  unexpectedly  began 
to  sail  slowly  up  towards  the  ceiling,  and  at  the  same  mo- 
ment I  had  a  blissful  sense  that  it  didn't  matter  a  damn 
what  she  or  I  or  any  one  else  present  was  doing.  I  dare 
say  that  the  pendulum  of  my  uncle's  clock  had  barely  time 
to  swing  a  full  arc  between  my  sight  of  the  ascending  Lady 
Hoast  and  the  moment  when  I  fell  into  an  immense  abyss 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  299 

of  darkness ;  but  in  that  fraction  of  a  second  I  was  able  to 
realise  that  I  had  no  further  responsibility  of  any  kind 
towards  my  partner,  my  uncle,  my  aunt,  or  any  one  else 
at  the  table.  They  were  all  phantoms  of  my  imagination. 
I  recognised  that  they  had  no  relation  to  me  or  to  the  great 
reality  which  was  sweeping  me  down  into  the  great  void. 
If  they  had,  I  didn't  care. 


VII 

When  I  returned  from  my  unremembered  journey  into 
space,  and  took  another  peep  at  the  Earth  through  the 
vehicle  of  Wilfred  Hornby's  senses,  my  first  shocked  im- 
pressions were  of  an  overpowering  smell  of  brandy  and 
an  unpleasant  dampness;  the  latter  condition  being  due,  as 
I  learnt  afterwards,  to  Lady  Hoast's  prompt  but  ineffectual 
first  aid.  My  next,  which  succeeded  very  quickly,  were  the 
strange  facts  that  my  collar  and  shirt  were  unbuttoned, 
that  I  was  lying  flat  on  the  hearth-rug  in  my  uncle's  study 
and  that  my  uncle  and  Henry  Graham  were  kneeling  by 
my  side  and  bending  over  me." 

"I'm  all  right,  now,"  I  said.    "It  was  the  heat." 

"Hum!  Hum!  Better  lie  still  till  Reynolds  comes— 
he'll  be  here  in  a  moment,"  my  uncle  advised  me. 

"But  really,  I'm  perfectly  all  right,  now,"  I  insisted.  "A 
little  giddy,  that's  all."  But  I  lay  still,  nevertheless.  I 
had  been  impressed  by  the  fact  that  Dr.  Reynolds  had 
been  sent  for.  I  was  not  sure  that  I  might  not  be  much 
more  ill  than  I  felt. 

"What  happened?"  I  asked. 

"You  fainted  dead  away  across  the  table,  my  boy,"  Gra- 
ham answered.  "You've  been  unconscious  for  the  best 
part  of  twenty  minutes." 

I  remembered  my  vision  of  the  ascendant  Lady  Hoast. 
"I  say,  I'm  sorry,  Uncle,"  I  apologised.  "But  look  here 
hadn't  you  better  go  back?  I  shall  be  all  right  here  till 


300  HOUSE-MATES 

Reynolds  comes;  and  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I'm  perfectly 
well  now." 

"What  I  can't  understand  .  .  ."  my  uncle  began,  and 
stopped  abruptly  to  listen  to  the  sound  of  the  front  door 
being  opened  and  the  voice  of  Reynolds  in  the  hall. 

"Well,  well,  here  he  is,"  he  continued,  and  got  up  to  meet 
the  doctor  in  the  doorway. 

Reynolds  seemed  at  first  to  regard  me  as  a  joke.  "Fainted, 
eh?"  he  remarked  when  the  elements  of  the  case  had  been 
presented  to  him.  "Dear  me,  and  what  have  you  been  up 
to,  young  man?  Living  too  fast,  eh?" 

But  there  was  something  dramatic  in  the  change  that 
came  over  him  when  he  began  to  examine  me.  The  hand 
he  laid  first  upon  my  pulse  and  then  upon  my  heart  moved 
with  a  sudden  quick  suspicion  to  my  ribs,  and  I  saw  his 
expression  of  cheerful  banter  draw  into  a  puzzled  frown. 

"Can  you  sit  up?"  he  asked,  and  when  I  had  obeyed 
him  without  much  difficulty,  he  helped  me  to  my  feet.  I 
felt  empty  and  still  a  trifle  giddy,  but  I  was  able  to  stand 
without  support. 

My  uncle  had,  also,  noticed  Reynolds's  new  gravity,  for 
he  began  to  clear  his  throat  heroically,  and  then  came  out 
with,  "Nothing  serious,  Reynolds?  Er — er — nothing  very 
serious,  is  it?" 

Reynolds  looked  up  with  a  glance  of  enquiry  at  Gra- 
ham, who  was  standing  thoughtfully  in  the  background. 

"If  you'd  sooner  I  went  .  .  ."  he  replied,  and  left  us  at 
once,  but  I  do  not  think  he  had  anything  to  learn  from  the 
doctor. 

My  uncle  had  been  either  less  observant,  or  was  deter- 
mined to  disbelieve  the  evidence  of  his  eyes.  He  mumbled 
out  something  in  which  the  word  "heart"  was  the  one  clearly 
emphasised  word. 

"His  heart's  as  sound  as  a  bell,"  Reynolds  returned 
curtly.  "My  dear  Williams,  the  boy's  starving — there's 
nothing  else  wrong  with  him.  Put  him  to  bed  and  give 
him  some  good  beef-tea  with  a  drop  of  brandy  in  it.  And 
see  that  he  takes  it  slowly." 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  301 

(I  never  dared  to  ask;  but  I  am  afraid  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  beginnings  of  that  excellent  dinner  had 
been  wasted  so  far  as  I  was  concerned.  I  was  certainly 
aware  of  a  great  emptiness.) 

I  resigned  myself  to  the  arm-chair  and  waited  for  them 
to  dispose  of  me.  I  was  full  of  shame  and  apology,  but 
I  had  come  to  the  end  of  my  energy,  and  the  task  of  ex- 
planation was  beyond  me  for  the  time  being.  Also,  I  was 
surprised  to  find  that  the  anticipation  of  beef-tea  and 
brandy  aroused  no  sort  of  enthusiasm.  It  may  be  that 
the  reek  of  brandy  still  so  unpleasantly  dominating  my 
every  impression  had  given  me  a  temporary  distaste  for 
that  medicine.  I  know  that  the  smell  of  it  filled  me  with 
repugnance  for  months  afterwards. 

"No  more  brandy,"  I  put  in  feebly,  at  the  first  oppor- 
tunity. 

Reynolds  nodded.  "All  right,"  he  said,  and  then  ad- 
vised my  uncle  to  get  me  to  bed  as  soon  as  possible. 

They  did  not  keep  me  waiting  very  long  for  that  relief. 
It  seemed  that  preparations  had  been  begun  before 
Reynolds's  arrival.  And  the  beef-tea  when  it  came  un- 
flavoured  by  any  stimulant  was  quite  acceptable.  My  aunt 
came  up  with  it,  herself,  and  explained  that  it  had  been 
intended  for  her  own  consumption.  She  was  trying  a  super- 
feeding  treatment,  she  told  me,  for  some  obscure  disease 
of  the  nerves  from  which  she  had  been  recently  suffering. 

I  hope  that  I  was  politely  sympathetic. 

I  slept  like  a  child  and  woke  ravenous. 

I  had  three  poached  eggs  and  a  glass  of  milk  for  break- 
fast. 

After  that  I  was  practically  normal  again,  if  still  a  trifie 
weak.  And  neither  then  nor  at  any  time  since  have  I 
suffered  any  unpleasant  consequences  from  the  effect  of 
that  six  weeks  or  so  of  underfeeding. 

I  do  not  know  if  my  case  was,  for  any  reasons,  a 
exceptional  one. 


302  HOUSE-MATES 


VIII 

I  had  to  dress  in  the  wrecks  of  my  overnight  splendour. 
I  had  received  no  instructions  to  stay  in  bed,  but  I  suppose 
they  had  been  taken  for  granted.  I  know  that  my  uncle, 
whom  I  found  alone  in  the  breakfast-room,  looked  uncom- 
monly surprised  to  see  me,  and  laid  great  stress  on  the 
"inadvisability"  of  my  having  got  up  so  soon. 

"Er — er,  now  what  do  you  propose  to  do?"  he  asked  when 
I  had  assured  him  of  my  ability  to  stand. 

"First  of  all  go  back  to  my  rooms  and  change,"  I  said. 

"You're  still  in  Keppel  Street?"  he  asked  dubiously,  and 
when  I  replied  that  I  was,  he  frowned  and  winked  and 
hum'ed  his  sincerest  disapproval.  "After  that  terrible  case 
— I  saw  you  gave  evidence,"  he  scolded  me.  "Hm!  How 
— how  you  could  ever  expect  a  client  to  come  there — 
Absurd." 

"By  Jove!  that  never  occurred  to  me,"  I  ejaculated.  It 
is  true  that  I  had  given  no  thought  to  that  obvious  con- 
sideration. 

"You  must  come  and  live  here  for  a  time,"  my  uncle 
said. 

I  shook  my  head  decidedly.  I  could  not  go  back  to  that 
atmosphere  of  suburban  respectability.  I  had  been  alive 
and  free  for  nine  months,  and  a  free  man  does  not  will- 
ingly return  to  imprisonment.  Moreover,  73  Keppel  Street 
had  become  a  home  to  me,  and  I  meant  to  stay  there  as 
long  as  possible.  Everything  that  had  ever  deeply  af- 
fected me  was  associated  with  the  place.  The  house  was 
full  of  my  friends. 

"I  could  not  do  that,"  I  said. 

My  uncle's  wink  somehow  conveyed  his  deepest  sus- 
picion and  displeasure. 

"We — we  must  talk  this  over,  Wilfred,"  he  said.  "I — 
I  feel  responsible.  I  am  not  going  to  the  office  this  morn- 
ing. You  shall  have  the  brougham  to  take  you  to — to  your 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  303 

lodgings— to  change.  And  I  should  like  you  to  come  straight 
back  here — the  brougham  will  wait." 

I  agreed  to  that.  I  was  glad  to  be  saved  the  necessity 
of  travelling  by  bus  to  Bloomsbury  Street,  in  evening  dress, 
and  with  a  collar  that  had  suffered  severely  from  brandy 
and  water. 

I  found  a  letter  from  Judith  awaiting  me  at  Keppel 
Street,  and  she  enclosed  postal  orders  for  £5.  Hill  had 
written  to  her  and  reported  that  he  thought  I  was  over- 
doing the  economy  business,  particularly  in  the  matter  of 
food.  She  did  not  scold  me  for  deceiving  her,  but  her 
letter  was  full  of  anxiety;  and  she  deplored  her  inability 
to  come  up  to  town  and  look  after  me.  Her  aunt,  it  seemed, 
was  worse,  and  might  die  almost  any  day.  Her  final  in- 
junction was  that  I  "must  have  proper  meals,"  whatever 
happened. 

I  kept  the  brougham  waiting  while  I  answered  that  let- 
ter, and  I  was  thankful  that  I  could  at  least  relieve  her 
of  all  anxiety  on  my  account.  I  returned  the  postal  orders 
as  an  earnest  of  my  newly  assured  position;  and  told  her 
that  I  should  certainly  have  kept  them  if  they  had  come  one 
day  earlier. 

Perhaps  it  was  as  well  that  they  did  come  a  day  late.  .  .  . 

I  found  that  my  uncle  had  worked  up  a  pretty  grievance 
against  me  when  we  had  our  promised  interview.  He 
kept  his  hurt  steadily  in  the  foreground  as  he  talked,  harp- 
ing on  the  note  of  an  insistent  "Why?"  Why  hadn't  I  been 
near  them?  Why  hadn't  I  explained?  And  he  gave  me 
clearly  to  understand  that  he  had  a  grave  doubt  whether 
the  atmosphere  of  the  house  in  Keppel  Street  had  not  seri- 
ously impaired  my  morals. 

Indeed,  it  was  not  until  I  had  given  him  an  account  of 
my  engagement  to  Judith  that  he  showed  any  sign  of  be- 
ing ready  to  condone  my  manifold  errors  of  commission 
and  omission.  And  from  first  to  last  he  never  gave  me 
the  least  hint  of  the  real  reason  for  his  long  silence.— 
learnt  that  from  Aunt  Agatha  after  lunch.  "You  see, 
Wilfred,"  she  explained,  "it  would  have  been  rather  pain- 


304  HOUSE-MATES 

ful  for  Gladys  to  meet  you  again  before  she  was  married." 
I  wondered  if  Gladys  had  been  spiteful. 

But  after  Judith's  most  reputable  ancestry  had  been  re- 
ported— her  father  had  been  a  colonel  in  the  Indian  army — 
my  uncle  allowed  a  suggestion  of  graciousness  to  become 
visible  through  his  mannerisms.  He  had  a  dry  humour 
of  his  own  and  remarked  that  he  had  not  expected  me  to 
find  a  Lillie  in  the  desert  of  Keppel  Street — I  had,  wisely, 
I  think,  suppressed  all  mention  of  Judith's  brief  ambition 
to  go  on  the  stage  and  her  assumed  name  of  Carrington. 
And,  then,  having  winked  himself  past  that  little  jest,  he 
opened  the  important  subject  of  Henry  Graham. 

Graham  was,  according  to  Uncle  David,  the  ideal,  the 
almost  mythical,  client  that  inspires  the  more  brilliant  day 
dreams  of  the  young  architect.  He  represented  that  won- 
derful thing  Influence.  His  present  requirements  so  far 
as  they  concerned  me  might  possibly  be  insignificant,  but 
if  he  "took  me  up" — a  quite  magical  phrase,  in  this  con- 
nexion— there  was,  I  inferred,  little  he  could  not  do  for 
me.  His  chief  interest  was  the  celebrated  Mechanical 
Waggon  Co.  of  which  he  was  the  director  and  principal 
shareholder;  but  he  was  "in"  everything  that  mattered,  my 
uncle  said,  and  he  made  no  secret  of  the  fact  that  he,  him- 
self, had  long  been  angling  for  a  share  of  Graham's  legal 
business. 

And  then  he  went  on  in  his  own  peculiar  unreproducible 
way  to  tell  me  how  he  had  mentioned  my  name  to  Graham 
and  given  an  account  of  my  abilities.  And  despite  the 
aggravated  complication  of  his  mannerisms — they  were  be- 
coming more  marked  with  age,  I  noticed — I  understood 
how  he  had  wanted  to  make  amends  for  his  neglect  of 
me ;  even  before  he  had  realised  to  what  straits  I  had  been 
reduced.  He  almost  apologised,  so  anxious  was  he,  now,  to 
do  what  he  might  have  called  "the  right  thing  by  me." 

Nevertheless  when  I  again  refused  his  offer  to  make  a 
temporary  home  for  me  at  Ken  Lodge,  he  displayed  the 
old  inclination  to  hector.  Perhaps  he  was  glad  of  the  ex- 
cuse to  cover  up  the  signs  of  his  recent  weakness.  It  was 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  305 

almost  with  an  air  of  challenge  that  he  finally  announced 
his  intention  of  financing  me  until  I  was  firmly  on  my  feet. 
Afterwards  I  wondered  if  his  offer  of  a  home  had  not 
been  made  to  save  the  expense  of  making  me  an  allowance. 
I  hope  I  am  not  doing  him  an  injustice  in  admitting  that 
speculation  of  mine ;  but  his  queer  habit  of  miserliness  was 
another  characteristic  that  developed  very  noticeably  in  his 
last  years. 

IX 

I  met  Graham  by  appointment  the  following  week.  He 
had  a  great  block  of  offices  in  Victoria  Street,  and  almost 
my  first  remark  to  him  was  a  criticism  of  their  darkness 
and  inconvenience. 

"I  suppose  you'd  like  the  job  of  designing  new  ones  for 
me,"  he  replied  with  a  dry  smile;  and  I  made  sure  that 
I  was  going  to  make  a  mess  of  the  interview. 

"Well,  you  certainly  want  them,"  I  said. 

He  looked  at  me  keenly  and  shook  his  head.  "London 
wants  rebuilding,"  he  remarked,  "but  it'll  have  to  want, 
and  so  shall  I.  The  problem  is  land,  my  boy."  He  gave 
me  no  time  to  answer  that — not  that  I  had  any  answer 
ready  for  him — but  went  on  at  once  to  tell  me  why  he  had 
sent  for  me. 

"I've  put  up  a  little  test  for  you,  Hornby,"  he  explained. 
"You  rather  took  my  fancy  the  other  night,  but  I  want 
to  see  what  you're  made  of;  so  I've  asked  a  friend  of 
mine  to  meet  you  here.  He's  going  to  build  what  he  calls 
a  cottage  near  Haslemere  somewhere,  and  I'd  just  like  to 
see  how  far  you're  going  to  be  amenable.  Look  here,  now, 
I'll  tell  you  what  I  mean.  D'you  know  an  architect  fellow 
called  Geddes  ?" 

"We  were  in  the  same  office  together,"  I  said. 

"Well,  then  I  needn't  tell  you  the  sort  of  pig-headed 
fool  he  is,"  Graham  went  on.  "I  put  some  work  in  his 
way  a  few  months  ago— I'm  interested  in  a  good  many  build- 
ing projects— and  he'd  have  got  a  lot  more  if  he  had  been 


306  HOUSE-MATES 

reasonably  amenable — but  he  was  altogether  too  autocratic. 
Now,  that  doesn't  do,  you  understand.  A  man  knows 
within  certain  limits  the  sort  of  thing  he  wants.  He  mayn't 
know  the  difference  between  a  Gothic  and  a  Renaissance 
moulding,  but  he  has  a  general  idea  of  what  style  is  going 
to  suit  him.  He's  out  to  buy  something,  and  he's  going 
to  buy  the  kind  of  thing  he  wants,  and  not  the  kind  of 
thing  Mr.  Geddes  considers  to  be  the  one  and  only  perfect 
design.  Your  friend  Geddes  is  too  arbitrary." 

"Is  he?"  I  said  thoughtfully. 

Already  my  idealist  visions  of  a  free  hand  were  dis- 
solving. The  phantom  of  my  ambitions  was  giving  place 
to  the  detestable  hard  outlines  of  modern  realism;  and  I 
foresaw  that  the  prospect  of  working  for  Graham  might 
not  differ  so  very  materially  from  the  prospect  of  working 
for  Horton-Smith. 

"Now,  you  strike  me  as  being  a  practical,  capable  sort 
of  chap  .  .  ."  Graham  was  saying. 

And  were  my  ideals,  after  all,  worth  striving  for?  was 
the  question  I  had  to  answer. 

Graham's  friend,  his  name  was  George  Bertrand,  came 
in  before  I  had  had  time  to  settle  that  problem. 

He  was  a  dark,  fleshy  man,  and  I  guessed  that  he  had 
a  strain  of  Jew  in  him — the  shape  and  expression  of  his 
eyes  were  certainly  not  English.  Nevertheless  his  speech 
was  English  enough,  and  he  displayed,  I  thought,  a  typically 
English  attitude  with  regard  to  architecture. 

For  after  we  had  discussed  the  site  and  accommodation 
for  his  proposed  "cottage" — he  intended  to  spend  £8,000 
on  the  actual  building — he  gave  me  his  idea  of  what  he 
was  likely  to  require  in  the  matter  of  style. 

"Nothing  highfalutin — something  solid  and  comfortable 
and  English,"  he  said.  "What  about  Georgian,  now  ?  Some- 
thing that  suggests  endurance,  eh  ?" 

"I  agree  with  solid  and  comfortable  and  English,"  I  said, 
"but  Georgian  is  no  more  English  than  the  Parthenon." 

"It's  been  acclimatised,"  he  said,  "like  the  deodar." 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  307 

"But  has  failed  as  yet  to  accommodate  its  appearance  to 
the  English  landscape,"  I  said. 

"Well,  it's  up  to  you  to  make  it,"  he  retorted. 

"Then  it  would  no  longer  be  recognisable  as  Georgian," 
I  replied. 

"What  I  want  is  a  small  English  country  house,"  he 
insisted.  "What  about  Elizabethan  if  Georgian  doesn't  suit 
your  ideas?" 

"Why  not  a  twentieth  century  house  that  would  repre- 
sent you  and  your  own  time  ?"  I  asked.  "Why  should  you 
want  to  copy  the  middle-ages  in  architecture?  You  don't 
wear  mediaeval  clothes." 

"Meaning  you're  struck  with  this  New  Art  fad?"  he 
suggested. 

"No,"  I  said  definitely.  "I  don't  want  to  copy  even 
that.  I  want  to  design  you  a  house  to  live  in.  You  wouldn't 
like  me  to  make  it  a  copy  of  an  old  house  inside — you'll 
want  bath-rooms  and  central  heating,  and  electric  light, 
and  everything  that  is  modern  and  convenient." 

"Oh!  that's  right  enough,"  he  put  in,  with  a  touch  of 
approval. 

"Then  why  should  you  want  the  outside  to  be  a  sham?" 
I  asked.  "Why  shouldn't  the  house  be  your  house  out- 
side as  well  as  in  ?  The  house  of  George  Bertrand,  Esquire ; 
designed  and  built  in  the  year  of  grace  1906.  You  won't 
be  ashamed  of  having  built  it,  yourself,  I  suppose?" 

Bertrand  looked  at  Graham,  winked  and  scratched  the 
back  of  his  neck.  "What  do  you  think,  Harry?"  he  asked. 

Graham  was  stroking  his  jaw.  He  looked  at  me  as  he 
said,  "The  point  is  whether  we're  willing  to  be  educated  ?' 

"Aren't  you  trying  to  educate  people  about  motor  ve- 
hicles?" I  put  in  eagerly.  "Do  you  find  that  the  public 
always  knows — well,  what's  best  for  it?" 

"I  don't,"  Graham  returned  drily. 

"Of  course,  you  don't,"  I  agreed.  "You're  a  specialist. 
When  one  goes  to  a  specialist  one  goes  for  advice.  Well, 
I'm  a  specialist,  too." 

Graham  was  smiling.     "Here,  wait  a  minute,"  he  said, 


308  HOUSE-MATES 

shaking  his  finger  at  me.  "I'd  like  just  to  draw  your  at- 
tention to  one  little  difference  between  you  and  the  other 
specialists.  It's  this.  If  a  man  comes  to  me,  or  to  a  doctor 
or  a  lawyer,  we've  only  got  to  consider  his  requirements ; 
but  you  and  your  friend  Geddes  and  the  rest  of  you  in- 
spired architects  aren't  thinking  of  your  clients  so  much 
as  your  Art.  You  want  to  satisfy  or  to  improve  the  aesthetic 
of  all  England.  You  want  Bertrand's  house,  for  instance, 
to  be  a  bright  and  shining  example  of  how  to  do  it,  for  all 
the  country  side." 

"Of  course,  I  do,"  I  said.  "Don't  you,  sir?"  I  added, 
addressing  Bertrand. 

He  did  not  answer  me,  but  looked  doubtfully  at  Graham. 
I  believed  that  I  could  manage  Bertrand. 

Graham  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "The  point  is  whether 
we  are  prepared  to  accept  you  as  an  inspired  prophet  of 
the  new  style,"  he  remarked.  "We  might  prefer  to  put  our 
money  on  Aston  Webb  or  Norman  Shaw." 

"If  you  come  to  me,  you  come  to  buy  the  goods  I  have 
to  sell,"  I  said  obstinately. 

"And  you  won't  accommodate  yourself  to  sell  any 
others?"  Graham  asked. 

"I'm  not  a  specialist  in  any  others,"  I  said.  "I  shouldn't 
come  to  you  to  buy  a  stage  coach." 

Bertrand  was  grinning,  but  Graham  leant  back  in  his 
chair  and  laughed  outright,  a  good,  honest  laugh  that 
cheered  me  immensely. 

"What  tickles  me,  Bertrand,"  he  said,  still  chuckling, 
"is  that  our  friend  Hornby,  here,  was  pretty  well  down 
to  his  last  shilling  a  day  or  two  ago.  And,  now,  that  he 
gets  the  chance  of  his  life,  he's  willing  to  chuck  it  for 
the  sake  of  some  ideal  of  Art.  How's  that  for  a  business 
proposition,  eh?" 

"Seems  to  me  all  right,  Harry,"  Bertrand  said.  "I'd  ex- 
pect that  cottage  of  mine  to  be  something — good,  you 
know." 

"You've  got  him,"  Graham  said,  winking  at  me.  "But 
now,  here's  another  proposition  for  you.  I'm  going  to 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  309 

build  new  works  in  Yorkshire  before  long.  What  are 
your  ideals  about  the  designing  of  motor-shops?" 

I  saw  those  works  in  a  flash.  "The  planning  would  have 
to  be  done  very  largely  by  yourself,"  I  said.  "For  the 
rest  all  you  want  is  an  effect  of  stability  and  grouping, 
nice,  clean  outlines  as  far  as  possible  and  the  absolute 
minimum  of  decoration.  What  I  should  try  to  express  is 
organisation  and  co-operation,  with  well-lighted,  well-venti- 
lated buildings — simplicity  and  efficiency,  you  know.  The 
thing  I  should  try  to  avoid  is  that  awful  suggestion  of 
ostentation  and  pretending  to  be  something  else — a  chateau 
for  example — that  you  see  in  the  designing  of  so  many 
works  of  that  kind.  I've  seen  a  factory  with  machicola- 
tions, as  if  it  were  designed  to  stand  a  mediaeval  siege." 

"You're  all  right,"  Graham  said,  and  I  knew  that  I  was, 
indeed,  all  right  so  far  as  my  prospects  were  concerned. 
But  there  had  been  a  moment  when  I  had  wavered ;  when 
I  had  wondered  if  I  could  face  my  uncle  with  the  report 
that  I  had  offended  Graham  for  the  sake  of  some  vague 
ideal.  I  had  given  way  so  easily  about  Parkinson  in  the 
days  when  I  was  engaged  to  Gladys. 

"The  difference  between  you  and  your  friend  Geddes," 
was  Graham's  last  approving  distinction,  "is  that  you're 
broad-minded  and  he  isn't.  He's  dogmatic.  He's  only  got 
one  idea.  If  he'd  designed  those  works  of  mine,  he'd  have 
tried  to  make  'em  look  like  a  garden  suburb." 

I  believe  Graham  was  right  in  that  judgment. 


I  ought  to  have  been  very  elated  that  evening. 

I  had  so  conclusively  beaten  Pferdminger  that  I  could 
afford  to  forgive  him— and  if  he  did  not  forgive  me,  he 
reverted  very  easily  to  his  old  air  of  servility  when  he 
learnt  that  he  was  again  to  serve  me  with  meals.  And 
as  an  evidence  of  his  returned  docility,  he  went  out  him- 


310  HOUSE-MATES 

self  the  next  morning,  and  diligently  polished  the  "sign  on 
the  post." 

But  the  essential  of  my  victory  was  that  I  had  won 
the  prospect  of  independence  on  my  own  terms.  I  knew 
that  in  future  I  would  be  able  to  do  my  own  work  in  my 
own  way.  And  there  was  a  fair  probability  that  I  might 
presently  realise  an  infinitesimal  fraction  of  the  ambition 
I  had  dreamed  in  the  Euston  Road — I  might  take  a  hand 
in  the  re-designing  of  London.  (As  a  matter  of  fact  I 
have  already  done  something  in  that  direction,  although  I 
am  not  going  to  catalogue  my  efforts  here.  I  am  not 
writing  this  book  as  an  advertisement.) 

And  yet,  I  was  aware  of  loss  that  evening ;  of  some  sacri- 
fice that  I  was  making  in  order  to  accept  success.  I  real- 
ised that  I  was  no  longer  a  true  member  of  the  community 
at  73  Keppel  Street;  that  do  what  I  would,  I  must  soon 
lose  touch  with  my  house-mates. 

We  had  been  united,  all  of  us,  in  our  common  struggle. 
However  diverse  our  characters  or  ambitions,  we  had 
for  the  most  part  achieved  sympathy;  and  even  where 
there  had  been  hate — as  in  the  strife  between  Helen  and 
myself — it  had  had  a  human,  I  think  I  may  say  an  honest 
quality,  that  had  left  no  bitterness.  Helen  and  I  had  in 
a  peculiar  sense  been  equals  in  our  fight  for  Judith.  All 
of  us  there  in  the  house  had  been  equals — with  the  one 
exception  of  Mrs.  Bast,  who  had  from  the  first  put  on 
airs  of  superiority. 

And  this  simple  realisation  of  essential  equality  with 
the  rest  of  mankind  constitutes,  I  suppose,  the  change  in 
myself  that  I  have  insisted  upon  from  the  beginning.  All 
my  upbringing  had  taught  me  to  divide  society  into  cate- 
gories. People  were  judged  by  their  position  and  labelled 
as  eligible  or  ineligible  acquaintances;  as  people  one  ought 
or  ought  not  to  know.  In  Keppel  Street  I  learnt  to  alter 
my  standard  of  values.  I  learnt,  before  all,  that  there  is 
not  such  a  creature  as  a  fellow  human  being  I  ought  not 
to  know;  and  that  just  so  long  as  I  shrank  from  sharing 
the  interests  of  my  fellow  men,  so  long  must  I  remain  a 


AT  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR  311 

mere  egg;  a  cramped,   distorted  entity,   bound   within   a 
shell  that  permited  me  no  true  sight  of  life. 

In  retrospect  I  always  think  of  73  Keppel  Street  as  a 
"jolly"  house.  The  epithet  is  Judith's  who  adds  that  they 
were  all  such  "jolly  people." 


XIV 
THE   LOOSE   ENDS 


A  RCHITECTURE  seems  a  very  precise  art  when  I  com- 
-^V  pare  it  with  story-writing.  When  I  design  a  build- 
ing, I  come  by  degrees  to  visualise  the  whole  of  it  and  to 
place  it,  mentally,  in  relation  to  its  surroundings.  One  be- 
gins with  a  rough  plan,  and  from  that  everything  springs, 
until  at  last  the  visualised  thing  is  created  in  the  solid, 
compact  and  whole,  and  varying  only  in  minor  details  from 
the  conception  one  has  formed  in  one's  own  mind — many 
of  the  variations  being  due,  unhappily,  to  the  incompe- 
tences of  contractors  and  workmen.  It  is  so  difficult  to  get 
away  from  the  rigidities  and  limitations  of  the  machine  in 
modern  building. 

The  writing  of  a  novel  (I  suppose  I  can  call  this  book 
a  novel?)  and  more  particularly  the  setting  down  of  a 
piece  of  autobiography,  is  a  very  different  undertaking. 
I  began  with  some  kind  of  plan  in  my  mind,  but  I  had  to 
abandon  it  before  I  reached  the  end  of  my  second  chap- 
ter. For  I  intended  originally  to  regard  only  one  aspect 
of  myself,  and  I  very  soon  found  that  if  I  were  to  confine 
myself  to  that,  I  should  be  compelled  to  write  an  imaginary 
story  to  fit  it.  The  experiences  of  my  life  have  not  lent 
themselves  to  throwing  one  aspect  into  a  high  light. 

Again,  the  belief  that  I  was  a  very  ordinary  example  of 
humanity,  the  belief  which  I  clearly  stated  at  the  outset, 
has  been  severely  shaken  by  the  introspection  that  has  been 
necessary  in  writing.  Indeed,  I  have  been  driven  to  the 

312 


THE  LOOSE  ENDS  31S 

conclusion  that  the  typical  in  humanity  is  a  mere  abstrac- 
tion. The  differences  between  individuals  are  so  inex- 
haustible; and  the  points  of  likeness  furnish  so  artificial  a 
means  of  classification. 

But  the  insuperable  difficulty  that  must  confront  the 
writer  who  would  give  to  his  story  the  neatness  and  finish 
of  a  completed  work,  is  the  consideration  that  life  is  a 
succession.  The  account  of  an  episode  may  be  neatly 
rounded  off,  and  given  an  air  of  completeness;  but  I  can 
find  no  stopping  place  in  the  story  of  a  life.  Even  death 
would  not,  now,  finish  the  long  train  of  events ;  for  some- 
thing of  what  I  learnt  in  Keppel  Street  has  already  been 
taught  to  my  two  children  and  they  in  turn  may  pass  on 
some  version  of  it  through  unrealisable  generations.  While 
even  in  the  ten  years  that  have  intervened  between  my  last 
recorded  episode  and  the  present  moment  of  writing,  I  could 
find  material  for  another  half-dozen  books  if  I  cared  to 
write  them. 

Nevertheless,  when  I  look  back  over  all  this  heap  of 
manuscript,  I  feel  that  the  only  year  of  my  life  which  I 
have  treated  in  detail,  has  some  special  significance;  that 
it  forms  the  nucleus  of  a  story  to  which  my  first  three 
chapters  were  a  necessary  prologue.  And  I  know  that  no 
other  period  of  my  life  has  the  same  significance.  That  is, 
perhaps,  some  kind  of  justification. 

But  my  professional  habit  will  not  permit  me  to  leave  all 
the  loose  ends  which  seem  to  me  so  horribly  obvious ;  and 
a  few  of  them,  at  least,  I  can  and  will  tuck  in  with  a  fair 
approach  to  neatness.  My  chief  trouble  is  to  find  a  method 
of  doing  the  job  quickly. 

It  seems  fairly  clear,  in  any  case,  that  I  must  bring  my- 
self and  Judith  up  to  date. 


II 

Her  aunt  died  in  August,  1906— three  weeks  after  my 
reconciliation  with  Uncle  David,— and  left  her  another  £200 


314  HOUSE-MATES 

a  year.  I  went  down  to  Cheltenham  for  the  funeral  and 
made  the  acquaintance  of  the  surviving  sister  who  is  still 
alive  and  stays  with,  us  now  and  again.  She  tolerates  me, 
but  I  am  afraid  that  we  can  never  be  equals.  She  does  not 
approve  my  "principles"  as  she  calls  them.  I  feel  her  watch- 
ing me  with  an  expression  of  grave  doubt,  and  know  that 
she  is  wondering  how  I,  the  son  of  a  clergyman  of  the 
Church  of  England,  come  to  have  such  queer  ideas  about 
society.  She  tries  to  find  excuse  for  me  on  the  grounds 
that  I  am  an  artist — of  a  kind. 

With  that  legacy  in  addition  to  our  joint  income,  and 
my  professional  prospects,  there  was  no  reason  to  post- 
pone our  marriage,  and  Judith  and  I  spent  the  necessary  five 
minutes  or  so  before  a  registrar  in  the  following  Septem- 
ber. I  had  introduced  her  to  my  uncle  and  aunt  but  we 
steadily  opposed  the  suggestion  of  a  public  ceremony.  Hill 
and  Mrs.  Hargreave  were  our  two  witnesses. 

We  lived  in  a  little  villa  in  the  Vale  of  Health  for  eigh- 
teen months  after  we  were  married,  moved  into  a  house 
at  Northwood  when  our  little  boy  was  twelve  weeks  old, 
and  finally  settled  down  into  this  place  which  I  designed  for 
myself  on  the  heights  overlooking  Wendover,  about  four 
years  later. 

My  uncle  died  in  the  winter  of  1912,  and  left  me  £20,000. 
I  regarded  that  money  as  a  superfluous  responsibility  at 
the  time,  and  I  was  planning  to  invest  the  whole  of  it  in  a 
model-dwelling  scheme  that  was  occupying  my  attention, 
when  the  war  broke  out. 

That  cataclysm  changed  everything  for  Judith  and  me. 
We  refer  to  the  new  period  between  ourselves,  as  the  be- 
ginning of  the  "third  phase."  For  her  life,  like  mine,  has 
been  divided  into  recognisably  distinct  phases,  which  we 
have  labelled  for  our  own  convenience  as  the  Cloister,  the 
World  and  the  War. 

My  professional  prospects  temporarily  vanished  in  Au- 
gust, 1914.  In  any  case,  new  building  operations  were  post- 
poned; and  two  of  the  jobs  I  had  in  hand  were  hung  up 
at  that  time  by  the  building  strike  which  seemed  so  im- 


THE  LOOSE  ENDS  315 

mensely  important  in  July  and  so  utterly  negligible  a  month 
later.  But  the  chief  cause  of  interference  was  my  imme- 
diate mobilisation.  I  had  joined  the  territorials  five  years 
before,  and  held  the  rank  of  captain,  and  Judith  after  0 
terrible  struggle  with  herself,  permitted  me  to  volunteer 
for  foreign  service. 

I  have  written  the  word  "permitted"  after  a  long  hesi- 
tation, and  it  does,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  suggest  the 
final  outcome  of  the  three  days'  struggle  between  us;  but 
no  single  word  standing  thus  alone  in  this  dull,  curt  record 
of  a  time  so  extraordinarily  full  of  emotion,  could  give 
any  effect  of  Judith's  submission,  or  of  our  relations  to 
one  another  through  the  various  stages  that  preceded  her 
decision.  She  was  so  furiously  opposed  to  the  idea  of 
war,  and  although  she  conceded  the  necessity  for  me  to 
fulfil  the  duties  I  had  undertaken  as  a  territorial,  she  loathed 
the  thought  of  my  killing  a  fellow-creature  hardly  less  than 
the  thought  of  myself  being  killed. 

But  I  dare  not,  now,  enter  into  any  report  of  that  argu- 
ment of  ours ;  in  as  much  as  such  a  diversion  would  entail 
an  account  of  our  relations  to  one  another — and  they  can- 
not be  explained  in  few  words.  For  I  believe  that  in  some 
respects  our  married  life  has  been  unique.  Judith  and  I 
are  in  many  ways  so  independent  of  each  other ;  we  have  so 
many  separate  interests  and  our  opinions — as  in  this  matter 
of  volunteering  for  foreign  service— do  not  by  any  means 
always  coincide.  And  yet  we  have  kept  our  love  not  only 
sweet,  but  ardent.  Our  feelings  for  one  another  have  deep- 
ened, but  otherwise  they  are  what  they  were  ten  years  ago. 
Judith  and  I  have  always  been,  essentially,  equals  .  .  . 

I  was  not  sent  abroad  until  the  spring  of  1915,  and  then 
I  went  to  Egypt  for  four  months.  I  came  back  from  there 
in  September,  had  ten  days  leave  at  Wendover,  and  then 
after  being  five  weeks  in  France,  I  lost  my  right  foot  and 
four  fingers  of  my  left  hand  in  a  little  affair  between  Auchy 
and  Vermelles.  The  wounds  might  not,  in  themselves 
have  been  so  serious,  but  I  was  left  in  a  bad  position  and 
nearly  bled  to  death  before  help  could  reach  me. 


316  HOUSE-MATES 

the  deepest  satisfactions  of  my  life  is  the  fact  that  the 
little  fellow  who  rescued  me,  received  the  Victoria  Cross. 
No  face, — no,  not  even  Judith's — was  ever  so  welcome  to 
me  as  his.  And  his  coolness  and  cleverness  still  seem  to 
me  almost  supernatural.  We  were  under  fire  all  the  time, 
but  he  saved  my  life  by  putting  a  tourniquet  round  my  leg 
before  he  attempted  to  move  me. 

I  was  pretty  bad  for  two  months  after  that  affair,  but  I 
get  along  famously,  now,  with  an  artificial  leg — the  sur- 
geons were  able  to  amputate  below  the  knee  and  I  go  with 
a  scarcely  perceptible  limp — while  my  left  thumb  has  be- 
come adapted  to  opposing  itself  against  the  stump  of  my 
hand.  I  can  still  do  most  of  the  things  I  want  to  do  with 
that  hand. 

I  began  this  book  last  January  as  a  means  of  relaxation 
and  forgetfulness.  In  five  weeks — of  which  I  spent  alto- 
gether nineteen  days  in  the  trenches — I  had  suffered  ex- 
periences that  leave  their  mark  for  life  on  a  man  of  my 
disposition  and  habit.  We  were  not  unusually  active  about 
my  bit  of  the  line  during  my  time  there;  our  lot  compared 
with  that  of  the  men  in,  say,  the  Somme  advance,  might 
appear  a  peculiarly  easy  one;  but  my  wounds  and  the  ill- 
ness that  succeeded  them,  seemed  to  have  enclosed  the  whole 
experience  in  a  ring  of  agony  and  terror.  Perhaps  I  was 
too  old, — I  was  some  months  past  my  38th  birthday  when 
I  went  to  France — or  it  may  be  that  men  of  my  tempera- 
ment cannot  endure  the  shock  and  threat  of  life  in  the 
trenches.  I  hope  in  any  case  that  my  feelings  were  not  typi- 
cal. For  I  can  tremble  now  to  think  of  the  horror  of  re- 
luctance that  might  have  overcome  me  if  I  had  not  been 
incapacitated  by  my  wounds;  if  I  had  had  to  go  back  .  .  . 

Even  now,  I  cannot  describe  my  experiences  to  Judith, 
and  yet  I  have  always  been  conscious  that  some  lurking 
danger  awaits  me  if  I  attempt  to  forget  too  completely.  I 
am  undoubtedly  mastering  my  horror  by  degrees,  and  I 
have  had  it  in  my  mind  to  begin  a  quiet  examination  of 
my  feelings  during  these  critical  five  weeks,  by  writing  some 


THE  LOOSE  ENDS  317 

sort  of  account  of  them — not   for  publication.     After  I 
have  done  that,  I  may  be  able  to  speak  more  freely. 

But  when  I  began  this  book  in  January,  I  did  it  in  order 
to  forget.  I  was  in  danger  of  becoming  insane,  then,  and 
I  found  relief  by  plunging  myself  back  into  the  past.  And 
I  can  see, — though  I  doubt  if  any  one  else  would  notice  the 
change  unless  it  were  pointed  out, — how  my  gradual  re- 
covery has  effected  both  my  style  and  my  method.  I  be- 
gan with  almost  pure  reminiscence  and  with  a  strong  inclina- 
tion to  trace  the  subjective  rather  than  the  objective  trend 
of  my  life.  But  as  I  grew  stronger  and  less  nervous,  I 
began  to  take  a  delight  in  the  telling  of  a  story ;  I  invented 
conversations  to  fit  my  memory  of  actual  events.  Some- 
times I  was  strongly  tempted  to  invent  incidents,  also ;  and 
I  might  have  succumbed  to  that  temptation  if  I  had  had 
more  confidence  in  my  ability  as  a  romancer. 

One  result  of  this  recovery  of  mine  strikes  me  as  worth 
noting,  namely  that  while  I  am  thankful  to  have  re-achieved 
a  certain  normality,  I  am  inclined  to  regret  the  lost  spirit 
of  my  first  three  chapters.  I  know  that  I  shall  never  recover 
it  and  I  could  not  wish  to  pay  the  penalty  that  alone  might 
re-induce  the  nervous  sensitiveness  which  enabled  me  to 
write  of  my  more  or  less  transcendental  experiences.  But 
I  feel  that  I  came  nearer  to  the  underlying  truth  of  life 
when  I  concluded  my  earlier  history  than  when  I  plunged 
into  the  realistic  account  of  my  year  in  Keppel  Street.  If  I 
could  have  written  that,  too,  subjectively,  I  might  have 
justified  my  claim  to  hatching. 


HI 

To  return  to  my  loose  ends;  Hill  did  not  join  up  until 
last  April,  and  he  is  at  the  present  moment  (October,  1916) 
in  Ireland.  I  hope  he  may  remain  there.  I  believe  he  will. 
Since  the  early  days  when  we  lost  such  men  as  Rupert 
Brooke  and  Dixon  Scott,  there  has  been  a  recognisable  dis- 
position to  save  men  whose  services  to  literature,  art  and 


318  HOUSE-MATES 

science,  cannot  be  replaced.  Hill's  name  would,  of  course, 
be  known  if  I  described  his  literary  activities  during  the 
past  ten  years;  but  he  has  asked  me  to  say  nothing  that 
will  "place"  him,  and  I  must  respect  his  wish. 

Mrs.  Hargreave  is  less  easily  disposed  of.  She  devel- 
oped a  form  of  megalomania  not  long  after  she  left  Keppel 
Street,  and  her  husband,  who  had  completely  failed  to  find 
any  evidence  against  her  that  would  give  him  grounds  for 
divorce,  had  her  confined  in  a  private  asylum  at  Chiswick. 
She  was  released  after  twelve  months — she  had  grown  very 
stout  in  that  time — and  lives  now  on  an  allowance  of  £150 
a  year  that  her  husband  conceded  her.  She  is  certainly 
not  mad,  but  she  is  unquestionably  eccentric.  She  still 
talks  sometimes  of  going  on  the  stage,  for  example.  She 
took  no  active  part  in  the  militant  movement  after  she  came 
out  of  the  asylum,  but  she  was  and  is  an  ardent  feminist. 

She  stayed  with  us  down  here  for  a  fortnight  last  Au- 
gust, and  her  theory  of  the  war  seemed  to  be  that  it  was  an 
interpolation  of  Providence  designed  to  put  women  into 
power.  I  am  willing  to  agree  that  the  enlargement  of 
women's  energies  will  be  one  of  the  war's  effects,  but  I 
cannot  admit  that  it  will  be  either  the  principal  result  or 
the  only  one.  I  feel  as  if  there  was  some  undefinable  con- 
striction in  Mrs.  Hargreave's  mind.  I  believe  that  if  she 
could  have  shaken  off  that  dominating  resentment  of  hers, 
her  life  might  not  have  been  wasted. 

The  same  opinion  is  true  of  poor  Helen.  She,  too,  is  in 
effect,  a  monomaniac,  although  she  has  never  suffered  from 
the  mania  of  greatness  that  landed  Mrs.  Hargreave  at  Chis- 
wick. Helen  reverses  Mrs.  Hargreave's  judgment.  She 
regards  the  war  as  an  intolerable  interference  with  the  great 
militant  campaign  which  was  moving  in  1914  towards  its 
triumphant  achievement.  She  has  been  doing  office  work 
for  the  last  two  years.  She  had  a  serious  nervous  break- 
down after  her  last  hunger-strike,  but  she  is  a  perfectly 
competent  secretary.  She  is  working,  now,  for  a  well- 
known  woman-organiser, — she  steadily  refuses  to  take  em- 
ployment under  any  man. 


THE  LOOSE  ENDS  319 

Herz  is  interned.  He  had  neglected  to  take  out  his 
naturalisation  papers,  and  applied  for  them,  too  late,  when 
he  had  received  his  notice  to  return  to  Germany  for  ser- 
vice in  the  Landsturm.  He  preferred  internement  to  the 
obeying  of  that  summons.  I  don't  blame  him. 

Pferdminger  had  shown  greater  foresight.  He  had  be- 
come a  British  citizen  many  years  before  the  war  broke 
out.  After  he  left  Keppel  Street,  he  started  a  boarding- 
house  in  Torrington  Square  and  succeeded  very  well.  I 
have  not  seen  nor  heard  of  him  since  1912,  but  I  have  no 
doubt  that  he  is  surviving  the  loss  of  his  German  boarders. 

I  do  not  know  what  happened  to  Lippmann  after  he  left 
us;  and  the  Meares,  as  I  have  already  mentioned,  never 
wrote  to  me  after  their  arrival  in  South  Africa. 

I  have  left  the  Basts  until  the  end,  and  I  find  some  diffi- 
culty in  dealing  with  them,  because  Judith  and  I  adopted 
"Oracles" ;  and  although  I  have  no  intention  of  ever  letting 
her  read  this  story,  I  cannot  avoid  a  feeling  of  distaste  for 
putting  down  the  facts  about  her  father.  I  picture  her 
accidentally  getting  hold  of  the  book  this  manuscript  may 
become,  recognising  herself  under  her  alias  and  being  hor- 
ribly confronted  by  a  bald  statement  of  the  manner  of  her 
father's  death.  She  will  probably  be  told  the  truth  when 
she  is  older,  but  she  is  a  delicate,  nervous  girl,  and  I  should 
not  like  her  to  receive  the  news  in  that  way. 

Her  mother  married  again,  a  moderately  rich  man,  I  be- 
lieve ;  but  we  have  held  no  communication  with  her  for  many 

years. 

****** 

It  is  quite  evident  that  my  story  is  finished,  but  I  am  as 
loath  to  leave  my  manuscript  as  was  Gibbon  when  he  had 
finished  "The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire."  I 
cannot,  perhaps,  speak  of  my  book  as  "an  old  and  agree- 
able companion,"  but  it  has  afforded  me  a  very  valuable  dis- 
traction from  the  immense  pressure  and  menace  of  the 
war;  and  I  believe  that  it  was  largely  instrumental  in  sav- 
ing me,  nine  months  ago,  from  melancholia.  Little  wonder, 
then  that  I  feel  unwilling  to  write  "The  End,"  and  put  my 


320  HOUSE-MATES 

task  on  one  side.  And  as  I  have  said,  a  book  of  this  kind 
can  never  be  finished. 

Only  yesterday  I  found  new  experience  that  was  like  an- 
other beginning. 

I  had  been  to  see  a  friend  in  Gospel  Oak,  a  man  who  was 
a  private  in  my  company,  and  has  since  been  invalided  out 
of  the  Army. 

I  left  his  father's  house,  oppressed  by  a  sense  of  the 
narrowness  of  life.  All  that  quarter  is  to  my  mind  repre- 
sentative of  the  worst  of  London  and  of  our  old  civilisa- 
tion. The  slums  vex  me  far  less.  There  I  find  adventure 
and  zest  whatever  the  squalor;  the  marks  of  the  primitive 
struggle  through  dirt  and  darkness  towards  release.  In 
such  districts  as  Gospel  Oak,  I  am  depressed  by  the  flat- 
ness of  an  awful  monotony.  Those  horrible  lines  of  moody, 
complacent  streets  represent  not  struggle,  but  the  achieve- 
ment of  a  worthless  aspiration.  The  houses  with  their 
deadly  similarity,  their  smug  false  exteriors,  their  con- 
formity to  an  ideal  which  is  typified  by  their  poor  imitative 
decoration,  could  only  be  inhabited  by  people  who  have  no 
thought  nor  desire  for  expression.  And  the  boy  I  had  vis- 
ited confirmed  me  in  that  deduction.  He  had  had  what  he 
called  "good  news"  for  me.  The  loss  of  a  leg  had  not  in- 
capacitated him  for  the  office  stool,  and  his  employer  was 
taking  him  back  at  his  old  salary — with  his  pension  he 
would  be,  as  he  said,  "quite  well  off."  Eleven  months  in 
the  Army  had  had  little  effect  upon  him.  Perhaps  he  was 
a  little  coarsened  and  hardened  by  his  experience,  less  in- 
clined to  respect  the  sacredness  of  life,  but  in  other  ways 
he  was  the  same  youth  with  the  same  ambitions  that  he 
had  had  before  the  break  came.  He  talked  of  being  able 
to  save,  of  setting  up  for  himself  a  home  modelled  on  that 
of  his  father,  who  had  served  the  same  City  firm  for  over 
forty  years.  I  could  detect  no  sign  of  any  reaching  out  to- 
wards freedom  in  his  talk ;  and  by  freedom  I  mean  not  the 
choice  of  occupation,  but  the  freedom  of  the  mind,  of  the 
imagination.  But  indeed,  any  freedom  of  imagination  must 
be  almost  impossible  in  those  surroundings.  The  dwellers 


THE  LOOSE  ENDS 

in  such  districts  as  those  are  cramped  into  the  vice  of  their 
environment.  Their  homes  represent  the  dull  concession 
to  a  stale  rule;  and  their  lives  take  tone  from  the  grey, 
smoke-grimed  repetition  of  one  endlessly  repeated  design. 
The  same  foolish  ornamentation  on  every  house  in  each 
dreary  slab  of  blank  street  reiterates  the  same  suggestion. 
Their  places  of  worship,  the  blank  chapels  and  pseudo- 
Gothic  churches,  rear  themselves  head  and  shoulders  above 
the  dull  level,  only  to  repeat  the  same  threat  of  obedience 
to  a  gloomy  law.  There  is  but  one  voice  for  all  that  neigh- 
bourhood, and  its  message  is  as  meaningless  as  the  crepe  on 
a  coffin.  The  thought  of  Gospel  Oak  and  its  like  is  the 
thought  of  imitation,  of  imitation  falling  back  and  becom- 
ing stereotyped,  until  the  meaning  of  the  thing  so  persis- 
tently copied  has  been  lost  and  forgotten. 

I  made  my  way  out  of  it  at  last  on  to  the  spaces  of  the 
Lower  Heath ;  and  there  I  found  great  depths  of  cloud  that 
were  like  the  openings  of  a  door  into  life.  Over  Highgate 
and  the  North  the  weak  blues  of  the  October  sky  thrust 
forward  rolling  piles  of  cumulus  in  white  and  primrose  and 
dusky  purples,  that  stood  up  gigantic  above  the  little  swell 
of  hill  and  wood.  The  whole  panorama  of  the  Heath 
seemed  small  and  composed  beneath  the  height  of  those 
gigantic  clouds;  the  Earth,  I  thought,  was  no  more  than 
some  wonderful,  beautiful  sediment  at  the  bottom  of  an 
enormous  bowl.  As  I  reached  the  Spaniards  Road,  a  sharp 
shower  drove  suddenly  out  of  the  South- West,  and  for  a 
few  minutes  the  promise  and  contrast  of  the  sky  were 
blotted  out  in  swirls  of  lowering  grey.  Then  I  saw  that  the 
horizon  was  slashed  with  a  yellow  band,  and  presently  the 
curtain  of  rain  was  rolled  up  to  discover  the  deeps  of  clear 
sky  filmed  here  and  there  with  drifting  scarves  of  white. 
And  with  the  return  of  the  sun,  the  distances  were  wrapped 
in  that  wonderful  veil  of  atmosphere  which  sometimes  trans- 
figures the  Heath,  an  almost  palpable  atmosphere  that  is 
like  thin,  clear  smoke;  that  is  like  the  bloom  on  a  Septem- 
ber plum.  The  nearer  trees  in  their  dark  greens  and  browns 
and  scorched  yellows  melted  back  across  the  valley  into 


HOUSE-MATES 

lavender  grey,  and  then  into  a  sweet  warm  blue;  and  yet 
the  depth  of  the  picture  right  back  over  the  Middlesex  Hills 
had  the  appearance  of  being  an  effect  rather  than  the  pre- 
sentation of  true  distance — I  had  a  sense  that  all  this  beauty 
of  line  and  mass  and  colour  was  in  some  way  composed,  as 
if  I  myself  had  created  something  more  Wonderful  than 
any  haphazard  view  of  natural  landscape  could  ever  be. 

And  it  may  be  that  the  thrill  and  elation  of  that  feeling 
made  me  more  susceptible  to  emotion,  when,  at  last,  and 
reluctantly,  I  descended  from  my  point  of  vantage  and 
made  my  way  alone  one  of  the  raw  brown  paths  that  wind 
among  the  silver  birches  and  lead  out  to  the  Heath  Exten- 
sion. I  know  that  when  I  came  in  sight  of  the  Garden 
Suburb,  grouped  about  its  two  churches,  I  was  ready  to 
shout  with  joy,  as  if  I  hailed  some  great  achievement.  It 
seemed  to  me,  then,  that  these  open  roads  and  graceful 
houses  were  so  infinitely  more  beautiful  than  the  dying 
miseries  of  Gospel  Oak.  In  another  mood  I  might  have 
been  critical,  but  then  I  rejoiced  as  if  I  saluted  a  new  age — 
an  age  of  hope  and  aspiration  and  individuality.  .  .  . 

And  surely  we  are  moving  towards  that ;  towards  a  recog- 
nition of  the  universal  claim  to  beauty  and  imagination. 
Ahead  of  us  lies  only  too  clearly  another,  and  possibly  a 
greater  phase  of  strife.  I  know  that  when  this  war  is  over, 
we  shall  have  to  face  the  immense  conflict  between  capital 
and  labour;  between  the  aristocracy  and  the  dispossessed, 
separated  as  they  are  by  that  dull  immobile  crowd  that  we 
speak  of  as  the  Middle-Classes.  And  I  know  that  it  is  a 
conflict  that  will  come  all  the  sooner  if  we  should  be  blessed 
by  a  fruitful  unarmed  peace.  But  that  struggle  is  inevitable 
and  in  a  sense  I  do  not  deplore  its  necessity.  It  will  not  be 
wasteful,  but  constructive.  This  contrast  of  Gospel  Oak 
and  the  comparatively  free  suburb  cannot  be  endured  much 
longer.  And  if  we  can  only  find  release  from  all  the  oppres- 
sions of  conformity  and  ugliness  by  revolution,  then  revolu- 
tion may  be  a  blessed  thing. 

THE   END 


A    000106690 


